Surviving
by Martine Brooke
Summary: With a chance to walk away, Henry allows himself and Abby to be rescued. But murder is very different to getting away with it. Meanwhile Abby searches for a brother only she believes she has. Direct sequel to Innocence.
1. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

"Henry, oh God, Henry, are you OK, your arm, you're bleeding..."

He stood there in shock. _What just happened?_

"Henry, your arm!" But Abby was here and alive and thankfully unharmed. She stood in front of him, holding his arm and looking at the blood spreading out of the cut. He couldn't feel it. All he could do was stare at the top of her head, smiling in relief that she wasn't running screaming from him. He wrapped his left arm gently around her shoulders and she hugged him back. _Like a friend, Henry, act like a friend. Don't scare her. Nothing too intimate. Remember you just found the body of your dead fiancée and you're supposed to be in love with her. Now she's dead. And everything's just wonderful._

"It's over. Abby, it's over now," he whispered. He expected the tears to come within a few seconds as the adrenaline faded and their situation kicked in for her. She wasn't crying yet. Maybe she'd go into shock. Or hysterics, but that wasn't really Abby. All he could do was hold her as she clung to him.

Despite the body of his dead father lying not a metre away, despite his bloodied arm, despite the billows of smoke coming from the church, he couldn't remember ever feeling so content. Here she was in his arms, trusting him and needing his comfort. He buried his face in her hair and she smelled so good, even though it had to have been days since she showered last. He could've stood here for hours.

"Oh God, Jimmy..." she broke away to look back at the church. "No! No!"

It was the worst possible thing she could have said and he nearly choked on frustration and an oh-so-familiar pain he could only identify as heartache as she pulled away slightly, but he had to play along. _Damn him. Damn that bloody fisherman. Damn damn damn. He'd better be dead. If he's alive, I'm screwed. He heard Wakefield call me. _Jimmy Mance had recently become the stuff of nightmares for Henry Dunn. The man whom Abby thought she loved and who seemed to survive anything they could throw at him. He was still furious at his father for the impromptu deal with the sheriff. _Abby will be OK. They've been apart for 7 years and only met again a week ago. That's not love. That's just memories. What I feel for Abby – that's love. And with any luck in a few weeks' time I won't have to hide it any more._

"Abby, I'm sorry. Wakefield got him. He's gone. Abby, he's gone."

"What happened?" He could see tiny tears pricking in her eyes, wetting the soft skin underneath, and had to restrain the urge to lick them away.

_What did she see? What did she hear? What exactly does she know firsthand that I'll have to build upon? _That was what he had to work with. When it came to other, longer explanations he would have to factor in what Shea and Madison might know but for now Abby was the only witness. _OK, so Abby saw Jimmy fighting my father off, the helicopter went overhead and Jimmy told her to run after it. She ran off and was almost certainly out of earshot when my father yelled that she was getting away. Almost certainly. No, if she had heard that, she wouldn't be here now. Then the flare and Jimmy tried to get away and I shot him. But Abby could only have heard the gunshot. She didn't know who fired it, only that I was the only one with a gun. _He threw together an incoherent-sounding explanation quickly.

"He – The gun. He came at me. I fell over something and I dropped the gun. We both ran. Jimmy was behind me. I heard the shot and I saw him fall and Wakefield aimed at me and I – Abby I swear, there was nothing I could do. He'd have killed me too," he explained, slowly and deliberately, channelling the pain into what he hoped sounded like sympathy. It sounded garbled now but it didn't have any holes large enough to pick to pieces. It had never been hard for him to make up stories and stick to them and Abby would of course believe him as the only witness. _My father is hardly going to stand up and contradict me. The fisherman is the only worry._

"I heard the shot," she said quietly, then looked up to him. "Do you think we could – his body, Jimmy – and Trish, do you think we could get them out? Oh God, he could be alive! Henry, do you think – ?

In response, the church roof creaked loudly, buckled and fell in, throwing flames upwards and scattering burning debris everywhere. _That settles it. I won't have to charge into a burning building to pretend to rescue a man who would send me to get a lovely lethal injection. _He held her close with the excuse of shielding her from the fire but really he just needed to feel like her hero. She couldn't – mustn't – look at him like that again. When he held the knife out. When she saw, if only for a second, who he really was. Confusion. Disbelief. Fear. Mute horror. Her eyes. They had been awful. _How could she ever think I'd hurt her? How she looked at me...I'll do everything in my power to make sure she never looks at me like that again._

_Would it be worth it?_ To take her back to the shore, to face the cops and the media and the endless questions. To meet the families of his victims. And Shea and Madison, if they made it to the other side. To convince the world that he was as innocent as Abby, simply a lucky would-be victim of a mass-murdering lunatic. To carry on as he did before: go back to his job, go back to his apartment, take care of Abby and hope that their relationship could move on to romance naturally as they recovered together. To risk losing her to outside influences, which was the scariest thing he'd ever considered. _Or I can knock her out now and carry her off to our little home across the island. _There would be no chance of her leaving him or rejecting him. Or even refusing him. She'd have to be his. But she'd know. Despite whatever Wakefield had made her think with his last actions, she'd know he was a murderer. And she'd look at him with those eyes every second of every day.

"No! No, Jimmy! No!" she screamed into his chest; she didn't know his dilemma but he took it as an answer anyway. _I don't want to make her miserable. I want her to be happy with me. I want to see her smile again. _She sobbed wretchedly into his chest and he shifted slightly, allowing her head to rest on his shoulder. _T__his feels wonderful. She should spend the rest of her life in my arms. I should kiss her. _But that was the last thing the police needed to know and he couldn't even begin to think of how Abby would react.

He was still holding her three minutes later when the Coast Guard arrived.

_And I'm out of time._

~~xx~~

I'm alive. I lived. I lived. Wakefield is gone and I survived. _It was the one thing that stuck out in her incoherent thoughts. Somehow she was still standing after a week of seeing death after death after death. She tried to count - Mr. Wellington, Uncle Marty _(or was he first?)_, Kelly _(no, she was first, Wakefield must have come after her, poor poor Kelly, she must have been scared witless)_ - and then all the bodies they'd started finding - Richard Allen, Beth, that skull _(whose was that?),_ Maggie swinging outside the window, and her father - so many, so so many..._You were so brave, dad. I couldn't have done that.

And Jimmy. Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy. _The name rolled around her head and her mouth like something so essential to life, so necessary for her to keep breathing, keeping standing up, keep from collapsing in Henry's strong arms. His arm was bleeding into her top but she no longer cared about what she looked like. After all, who was still alive to care? Jimmy was gone. _Jimmy. My Jimmy. Dead. I loved him. I loved him. He was so close. He survived everything. The explosion at the marina, the sofa in The Cannery while Wakefield hung up Shane's body. Oh dear God, Shane too. How many? How many? All to die a few minutes before we're rescued. He saved my life. He told me to run. He fought Wakefield. He bought me time.

_"Shhhh... They're here now, Abby. They're going to help us, they're going to take us back to shore," Henry told her as the others tried to peel her away from her only remaining friend. He had held her up, ignoring his own wound, until the Coast Guard had come running up and Henry had told them she needed help._

_"No, don't leave me, no Henry, are we - back? Safe?" Somehow her thoughts couldn't form coherent sentences and everything she said came out as gibberish._

_"Shhhh... Don't speak. Just go with the woman here. She'll look after you," he said as he handed her over to a woman in uniform. The woman had told Abby her name, but she'd already forgotten it._

_"Are you injured?" the officer asked her, giving her a plastic cup of coffee and draping a blanket around her. She wasn't cold or hungry but it was easier just to go along with it._

_"No," she replied after a pause, finally remembering the question. "No, I'm not. Henry is. Wakefield stabbed him but he killed him and -"_

_She looked around but Wakefield was still dead, his body being stared at by a cluster of cops carrying enough weaponry to start a small war. _You're too late! You failed! You should have been here earlier and you could have saved Jimmy and Trish and Danny and all the others! _She held herself as she cried, the officer looking at her with a kind of pity until her tears blurred everything. She tried to wipe them away with the blanket before asking her rescuer for tissues._

_"Hey," Henry started at her distress, trying to join her but failing as a medic held him back and cleaned his arm._

_"Oh," she said quietly. _Of course they're looking after Henry. It's me they're interested in. _"No, I'm fine."_

_"Who else is there that we need to take back with us?" the woman asked. "How many other survivors are there?"_

_"None," Abby whispered, too exhausted to be angry anymore. "It's just me and Henry left."_

_"Sully - err, Christopher Sullivan - might still be alive. And Danny Brook," she heard Henry call over, a crazed note of optimism in his voice. "I left - Sully and me got separated after he spoke on the radio to you. We never saw Danny's body but Sully told me Shea Allen said he'd been fighting Wakefield. Maybe he got away alive. Who else? I don't know. Everyone just started disappearing. But there might be others still alive!"_

_She could only shake her head and drink the coffee. _No, Henry. You hoped Trish was alive but she wasn't. I hoped Jimmy would live but he didn't. Wakefield wouldn't have let Danny keep his life before moving onto the others. _She kept expecting the monster who'd killed her parents to sit up, get to his feet and hold out a knife towards her. It didn't feel real that someone like him could just die like that. He'd haunted her in nightmares for seven years and in her waking hours for seven days and the relief at seeing him truly and definitely dead sent tears down her cheeks._

_Henry appeared at her side, putting his bandaged arm around her shoulders. He looked ashen and she mentally checked herself. _He's lost just as many friends and family as I have. I shouldn't blame him for hoping his friends are alive. Poor Henry. _Silently they watched a small army of officers branch out through the woods, radioing the mainland to report "two known survivors, Henry Dunn and Abigail Mills, with the possibility of further survivors. John Wakefield is dead, I repeat dead. We have his body. It looks like a bloodbath here and we're going to need more people to cover the land..."_

_Finally finding herself safe, she fell asleep in his arms._


	2. What a tangled web we weave pt 1

The door clicked open, then closed, and Henry stopped prodding the cup of lukewarm coffee around the table with his fingernails. Whatever had been more important than questioning him, they were back now. Finding himself alone with two police officers in a dark interview room, he decided to get angry.

"Where – where were you? We radioed the Coast Guard hours before we were rescued! Hours! If you had come immediately like you were supposed to we'd all be alive. Trish would be alive!" he yelled at them, standing up and leaning on the table, daring them to come closer than the door. To their credit, neither officer looked remotely daunted by him. He just looked like a hysterical survivor who'd come close to being murdered too many times and lost too many loved ones and was lashing out at anyone who could've helped. _Which is the plan._ "You were supposed to save Trish! She was going to marry me. She was going to be my wife."

He'd been playing "anguished survivor in shock trying to stay strong for his friend's sake" since he'd carried Abby back to the helicopter and she'd slept across the seat with her feet in his lap. He'd wanted to lie down next to her, cuddle her body to his and wait peacefully for the shore but instead had been compelled to spend the journey asking the Coast Guard about Shea and Madison, who were apparently fine but ragged, and if any another survivors had been found. The fact that they'd then woken Abby up and taken her away from him to another interview room was the font of his current rage. But he could channel that into the pretence. In truth, the whole rescue had occurred in exactly the right way. _You came at just the right time. Any earlier and you might have saved Jimmy and captured my father. Any later and I'd have probably given in to the urge to take Abby prisoner. Maybe I threw the chance for isolated happiness away. No, she'd never forgive me for bringing my father back into her life and for all those deaths. And it wouldn't be perfect, making love to her if she didn't want me to._ Bringing himself back sharply to the current situation, Henry forced himself to remember the name of the woman he was supposed to love.

"Mr. Dunn – sit down and talk us through what happened," the older man said as Henry lowered himself back into the seat. He was in his late fifties, overweight, balding, and looked like he'd rather be eating doughnuts and shifting piles of paperwork than dealing with a murder spree. Still, his eyes were sharp and Henry knew not to underestimate law enforcement. Not all officers were like Charlie Mills and the man must have had his job for a reason. To his intense amusement, the man then introduced himself as Green. If there was anything this man wasn't, it was green.

The younger agent placed a mug of black coffee in front of Green and sat down next to his partner, nursing his own cup. He was introduced as Hernandez and looked oddly excited to be involved. _Maybe it's the high-profile nature of what I've done. Maybe Hernandez and I share similar interests, with the variation that he investigates and I commit. Or maybe he's just high on caffeine._

"Is Sully – did you find Sully – Christopher Sullivan? Did he make it?" he asked, instead of answering the vague question. It wasn't really a question, just an invitation to start clearing up loose ends. Henry wanted to deal with the Sully question immediately before Abby started to run with the one slip-up he'd made. _Damn, if they ask her about Sully first, I'll be a suspect. If I can get my story out before she does, I'll look stupid but not guilty. _He wished he could listen in to Abby's interview.

"No," Green answered, looking straight at him. "Christopher Sullivan's body was found in another part of the woods. He died of stab wounds. Can you tell us the last time you saw him? The Coast Guard say you were present when he spoke to them over the radio."

It would be stupid to lie. He could remember every second of that communication. He never spoke. Sully did all the talking so it was plausible that Henry hadn't been there at all. But why would Sully have lied? Any attempt to portray Sully as less than the hero Shea and Madison knew him to be would fail too. He didn't dare contradict Shea in that respect. No, the story he'd made up on the helicopter was his best shot.

"Oh God," Henry breathed, bringing his hands up in a praying position and burying his mouth and nose, before sweeping his palms over his face and through his hair. It was a move he'd perfected. "It was my fault. We split up. We argued. It's all my fault. He'd be alive now if we'd stuck together."

"Step by step, Mr. Dunn," Hernandez prompted, taking yet another loud slurp of coffee.

"I found him in the radio hut. I'd lost Trish in the woods. We ran into Wakefield – well, we saw him in the distance – and I told her to run back to the Candlewick and I'd catch up in case Wakefield came this way but he didn't and then I couldn't find Trish again. I thought she might have gone to the radio hut because the others were supposed to be there. Then I found Sully and he told me he'd put Shea and Madison on a boat back but he'd stayed to fight. He was brave to stay. Trish wasn't there either so we went out to look for her."

Henry looked up and both men nodded. _Good, they're following. Now for the good bit._

"He started saying that the whole thing was my fault. That it was my fault Wakefield had come back solely because I'd invited Abby. That he'd come back for his daughter and Abby was a walking disaster area anyway and, if she had stayed in L.A., everyone would still be alive. I told him that Abby wasn't Wakefield's daughter and, even if she was, none of this was her fault. Because Abby hadn't done anything wrong. And he started yelling at me and waving the gun around and saying that Danny was dead and probably Trish too and he'd lost all his friends because of me. And I told him if he thought he'd be better off on his own, he could go, as long as he gave me the gun. And he did. He was going straight to the marina – I didn't think anything would happen to him! I needed the gun because I was going looking for Trish. And Abby and Jimmy."

He paused again and looked up. He'd spoken to his hands on the table instead of into the agents' faces, allowing him to picture the scenes exactly as he'd drawn them, but he wished he could've looked at them when he mentioned Abby. Looking now, they both stared at him with raised eyebrows. Hernandez had spilled coffee on the table where he'd put the mug down too fast.

"Wait – Abigail Mills is John Wakefield's daughter?" the young police officer asked, eagerly taking the red herring Henry had thrown out, instead of questioning the rationality of splitting up. Green looked unimpressed.

"Yes," Henry said simply, looking between the two men as if they should have known this already. "Well, we thought so anyway. Cole Harkin had Wakefield's diary from his time in prison and it said that Sarah Mills' child was his. That she'd had his child. Sarah Mills only had one child – Abby. Of course, he could have been wrong. Maybe she is Charlie's daughter. But it doesn't matter. Abby had nothing to do with the murders!"

_The diary never mentioned the child being a boy – thank you Dad. Of course, a DNA test would prove that theory wrong, but who's to say Wakefield wasn't simply mistaken about having a child at all? As long as they don't test me too._

"And did Abigail Mills know this before you found out?"

Henry shook his head quite truthfully. "No, she was as horrified as the rest of us. Shea can tell you. Shea Allen. Oh God, she's the only other one left. No, Abby definitely didn't know. And we didn't talk about it afterwards, me and her. I knew she felt awkward about it and – I mean – I didn't care. She's my best friend. She'll tell you. Both she and Shea will tell you about the diary."

Green sighed, apparently accepting the bold lie as truth to Henry's delight. _This is going to make Abby feel terrible but it's the only way I can clear up the scenario of my father having a child. And I'll be there to comfort Abby after I convince her that it's true._ Green changed the subject. "OK, so you left Christopher Sullivan in the woods with a serial killer on the loose. What happened then?"

"I thought he'd just go to the marina! To meet the Coast Guard and I'd find Abby and Jimmy and Trish and we'd all go to meet him."

"What happened after you split?" Green repeated, ignoring his indignant protests.

"I was looking in the woods for Trish. Calling for her. She wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere and –" he broke off, pretending to choke on hysteria. "I kept thinking about Sully and how stupid I'd been. How selfish. I should've stayed with him and just let him yell at me. But he'd said that Abby was in on the murders and I started to think that maybe he was right, that Wakefield hadn't killed her after Charlie's death when he could've because she was his daughter and I know I'm wrong now and I was probably going mad in those woods but that's what I thought."

_I'm going to have to paint myself as a paranoid idiot for this to work._

"I saw Wakefield again. Just for a second. He'd probably just killed Sully now I think of it. I couldn't have got a shot. So when Abby and Jimmy came up behind me I jumped. Abby asked me if I'd seen Sully and I just kept thinking 'Maybe it's her. Maybe it is Abby. Maybe if it is her, Sully can meet you guys at the marina and bring help.' And another part of me was thinking how stupid I was to let Sully go off on his own. So I said no. I said I hadn't seen him. And they said – they told me Trish was dead. They took me to where she was supposed to be but she wasn't there. There was blood but she wasn't there. And I – I needed her body. So I kept looking. We went to the church. And Trish was there on the altar."

He paused, looking up at the agents and trying to look pained. _Ha. What my father did with Trish's body was amazing for the little time he must have had to display it. Shame I had to kill her though. She didn't hold a candle to Abby, didn't even come near, but I didn't want her to know before she died. _Thankfully both of them looked like they believed him. Hell, Abby and Shea would be relating garbled stories too. Madison was probably having a ball.

"Wakefield was there. He waited for us to come in and he attacked Jimmy. He told Abby to run. Jimmy did. Jimmy told her to run. And she did and I couldn't shoot because I couldn't hit Jimmy. But Jimmy lit the flare and burnt Wakefield and he got free and ran. We both ran after Abby but I tripped. I fell over something and I dropped the gun. Jimmy was behind me and I heard a shot and I knew Jimmy was gone. I saw him fall and Wakefield looked at me and I just ran. I met his eyes and I've never been so scared. I didn't stop for Jimmy. I just ran. My mind was blank, all over the place, I just wanted –" he broke off to sweep his hands over his face again. "I feel awful about the next bit."

"Go on."

"I still wasn't sure about Abby. I mean, at that point. She'd survived so long. So I said I hadn't seen Sully. So he could survive if Abby attacked me. I thought she'd led me into a trap for a second. But then I saw Wakefield again. He didn't see me. I mean, he didn't see that I saw him. And he was moving round behind Abby, a long way off in the trees, and I thought if he comes for us, I need to defend myself so I took the knife out behind me. I found it in the hut with the radio. I knew if I had it in front of me, Abby would be between me and Wakefield so if I was lucky he wouldn't see that I had a knife. And he was running. Towards us. And I thought I would gamble, that it's not Abby and that I had to protect her. So I pushed Abby out of the way and he pretty much ran into my knife. I didn't think – I didn't think it would be that easy. He stabbed me though. Just my arm. It's OK now. I really scared Abby. She must have thought I was going to attack her. You'll tell her, won't you?"

Green nodded quietly.

"The church burned down. If Jimmy Mance wasn't dead already, he would've – he wouldn't have survived that. I didn't have time to save him. I – as soon as I made sure Abby was safe, the roof fell in. Did you get Trish's body out? I know – I know she's gone but I want to bury her properly. She was going to be my wife," Henry trailed off. The body wasn't important of course, but he had to seem like her cared for his dead fiancée rather than being totally focused on the young woman in another interview room.

"Yes, we recovered two bodies from the fire. Patricia Wellington and Jimmy Mance. There have been more than thirty bodies found, Mr. Dunn, so we will need someone to identify them."

He just nodded slowly. Someone knocked at the door and a woman stuck her head in, beckoning to Green to come out. _They're comparing notes. Seeing if mine and Abby's stories match up with Shea and Madison's. The only remaining hiccup is Madison knowing Wakefield had an accomplice. But there's nothing to say that Wakefield's elusive child and the accomplice are one and the same person. After all, Abby is really the only candidate for the former and she certainly couldn't have been Wakefield's little helper. Even if she was his daughter, she'd never have helped him. He murdered her mother. Or maybe she would have turned out like me._

"Is Madison Allen all right?" he asked Hernandez quietly. "She's only nine. She should never have been caught up in all this." _My father should have killed her like he promised._

The officer smiled. "Last time I saw her, she was enjoying the attention. She's doing much better than her mother. I think she'll be fine."


	3. What a tangled web we weave pt 2

_She woke to find herself being shaken gently by the female officer who had sat with her earlier. She still couldn't remember her name. Somehow they'd made it back to civilisation and safety._

"_Hey, don't wake her! It's been ages since she last slept. The interviews can wait. John Wakefield isn't going anywhere," Henry hissed from next to her. Inwardly she was very glad that he was here, even if his chivalry wasn't necessary._

"_It's okay, Henry," she said, touching his arm gently and hoping it would make him feel fractionally better about their situation._

"_Ms. Mills," the woman led her off down the corridor of what must have been a police station. It should have felt like relief – she was alive and safe in the protection of a lot of armed men and women. And John Wakefield was dead. But she still felt lost. The station was a lot bigger and far busier than the one her father had run and these people - the woman and the man who was holding the door open for them – were taking her away from her only remaining friend._

I should never have accepted the invite. I should never have come home. John Wakefield was waiting for me to return all those years.

_The man introduced himself as Carson and to her relief pointed out that the woman was Terry. They offered her coffee, which she gratefully accepted, and Terry disappeared to get it. Abby sat in an awkward silence with Carson, waiting for him to say something and half hoping he never would._

They're going to tell me Jimmy's gone. I spend seven years in what may as well have been a coma and as soon as things start to get better John Wakefield destroys everything again. Jimmy can't be dead. That's not how things are supposed to go. He's supposed to live and forgive me for leaving and be with me now. I was going to stay with him! He can't –

_She looked at the dark plastic of the table as she willed herself not to cry. As Officer Terry returned, an unneeded box of tissues was placed in front of her, followed by a steaming mug of milky coffee. She thanked the woman quietly, wondering how much of a wreck she looked. There was a long mirror across one wall of the room but it was obviously one-sided and not one for cleaning up in. She breathed deeply, clearing her mind, and asked the question whose answer she needed to know._

"_He's gone, isn't he?"_

"_Who?" Carson asked, looking up from shuffling papers._

"_Jimmy. Wakefield murdered him."_

"_I'm sorry, Ms. Mills," Terry said quietly. "He died before the teams arrived. Aside from a few locals who bunkered down, you and the other four are the only outsiders to survive."_

_Her mind kept wandering, imagining Jimmy's last seconds and what must have been going through his mind. Fighting an insane and almost-unstoppable serial killer, being shot and, if that didn't kill him, suffocating in the fire. And desperately trying to think of something else because the idea was crushing._The fire. He burned to death in the wreckage. Oh God, Jimmy, no. I never heard him scream but I can see him...

_She became aware that they were saying something to her that she wasn't hearing. She stared hard at their lips but it didn't help. "Say that again?"_

"_Can you tell us what happened on the island? Shea Allen has told us a lot but we need the story from each of you. We need to piece everything together to understand what went on over the last week or so," Terry said, now audible. She seemed sympathetic but thankfully didn't smile. Abby's grandmother had made her see a therapist when she first arrived in Los Angeles but Abby quickly hated the woman, who would never understand what she had seen and, above all, smiled too much._

"_What do you want to know?" she whispered._Where do I start?

"_Tell it however you want. There's no hurry."_

_She stopped and started a lot as she explained Henry's wedding to Trish and how long it was since she'd been home. They both nodded solemnly when she spoke about John Wakefield's first rampage and she guessed that they both knew everything about that already. But Carson's eyebrows shot up when she mentioned Kelly seeing Wakefield alive on the island and how no one had believed her and how he must have hanged her for that. JD and Shane's squabbles seemed trivial now both men were dead._

"_It all started, for all of us, when Mr. Wellington died, on the Friday during the wedding rehearsal. There was a trap in the church. It was rigged to drop a head-spade on anyone standing under the chandelier when the lights were turned off. There was a floor plan so Wakefield knew Mr. Wellington was going to be standing there. It was me. I was the one who turned off the lights and triggered it. And then dad came back because he'd found Reverend Fain. He didn't realise someone else had died. Reverend Fain was supposed to be there at the rehearsal but Wakefield murdered him too. And afterwards JD took me to show me where he'd found Uncle Marty – Henry's uncle – hanging from a tree in the woods like – like – like my mom."_

_Knowing she'd cry if she spoke again, Abby drew out a tissue and covered her face while she tried to calm down._I need to do this. They need to know what happened. It's their job. _She swallowed a mouthful of coffee, which burned as it went down, and tried not to choke._

"_When did you find out John Wakefield was still alive?" Carson prompted. "According to our records, Sheriff Charlie Mills killed him seven years, recovered his body and had him buried on the island. Now it seems he made the whole thing up. Do you –"_

"_I don't know why dad did that!" Abby interrupted angrily. "But he must have had a good reason. My dad was a good man."_They're not going to pin this on dad. They're not going to think 'We can't prosecute the real murderer so we'll slander a dead man who can't defend himself'. I won't let them – and Henry will back me up. _Collecting herself, she decided to start from Madison's kidnapping, as everything leading up to her father's death seemed to stem from that point. She took several deep breaths and began to explain._

"_Wakefield kidnapped Madison on Saturday. We don't know how. That's why we didn't all leave on the boat. Shea was running round looking for her and we all helped. Later she phoned me on my cell – this was just before Wakefield destroyed the cell tower – and told us that if anyone left the island he'd kill her. And we started finding bodies. Richard Allen. Shea thought he'd taken Madison and left but Wakefield got him._

"_You know about JD's arrest, right?" she asked, pausing for nods. "My dad had gone to speak to Cole Harkin in the woods about JD. Wakefield shot Harkin and burned the cabin but dad just had a leg injury. Cal treated him at the clinic on Saturday night after we found JD. He was at the marina. He'd escaped from the cells and Wakefield had caught him instead. There was nothing I could do to save him."_

So many things I can't talk about. The journal, the wretched journal. And Jimmy. If I mention Jimmy, I'll break down completely. If I say his name. They won't understand. No one ever understood. Not even Dad. He just didn't want to see me at all. And he's gone too now. All I have is Henry.

_She skipped over a lot of the details of the fight at the Candlewick. She didn't want to talk about the journal and the way everyone had looked at her before she'd left. _They thought I was John Wakefield's daughter. And so did I. _She spent the time on Beth vanishing and crawling around in the dark, looping tunnel system._

"_W__e found Madison and she was safe. We took her back to the Candlewick and she said that it was my dad who took her. That it was a game. She was lying! John Wakefield took her and made her lie to us. But dad was gone when we got to the clinic and we found maps of the tunnels in dad's attic. He's got a lot of information on John Wakefield up there. I know he didn't tell the truth seven years ago about killing him but he kept working on it. He didn't give up. He was a good man._

"_We went to the Marina to try and escape on a boat. Then it exploded. Wakefield blew up all the boats, and J-J-Jimmy was there and I thought he was dead because he was on the boat – it was his boat – and I didn't have a chance to say goodbye," she whispered, gasping for breath as she remembered Henry having to hold her back from running out into the flames. She realised she'd shredded the tissue and took another to take the tears that she could feel pricking at the back of her eyes and throat. "Wakefield starting shooting at us and we all ran back to the Cannery. Nikki was there and Shane said that two police officers had arrived but they were dead and in the water too. Why didn't you send anyone after them?"_

_They both had the decency to look ashamed._

"_At the time, we thought it was only one death. That of Thomas Wellington by JD Dunn and, the last we heard, he was in custody. We didn't know then that John Wakefield was alive and that there had been a string of deaths. Kelly Seaver's was initially recorded as a suicide. When Officers Coulter and Riggins didn't contact the station, we just assumed they were getting on with the investigation," Carson explained. It didn't make Abby feel any better._

"_Madison kept lying about my dad. Everyone thought he was doing this. But he wasn't," Abby said. She told them of Katherine at the Candlewick, Maggie Krell hanging from the roof of the Cannery, Cal and Sully going after the sailboat and Shea not letting anyone speak to Madison. "After Cal and Sully left, Wakefield brought Jimmy's body to the Cannery on one of the police vehicles and everyone thought it was my dad. Jimmy was alive. My key – my hotel room key was taped to his hand. I had to go. I had to see. I still thought it was my dad then. Because Madison lied._

"_He – he – he was there, standing up against the window. My dad. He looked so scared. He – it – Wakefield had rigged him. It was a trap. He was listening in over a radio. Dad said Wakefield was still alive and that he'd been responsible for all the murders and that I was the only one who could stop him."_And that Wakefield definitely wasn't my father._"He'd tra-traded his life for Jimmy's. Because Jimmy loved me!"_

_That was it. She sat sobbing unashamedly in front of Carson and Terry and anyone who might have been watching through the mirror, clutching her coffee mug and a wad of tissues and trying to hide her face behind them. Terry and Carson seemed to whisper to one another, conferring about something, but she couldn't hear what they were saying._

"_A-and W-w-w-wakefield pulled him back thr-through the window and h-he was h-hanging. Wakefield m-murdered him l-like he murdered my mom. He came up behind me and I think he was g-going to kill me too b-but Henry and Danny appeared and he v-vanished. They came after me to make sure I was OK. Henry saved me."_

"_Can you continue?" Terry asked gently._

"_Danny though Wakefield might stop then," she whispered, remembering how much she'd hoped he was right. She'd resolved to kill him regardless but it would have spared Nikki and Shane. It's not fair. "But he didn't. He killed Nikki and Shane at the Cannery. Danny broke down. It was awful."_

_She paused. "Is Danny dead? Madison said he fought Wakefield…" They nodded and her stomach twisted up in grief. She'd liked Danny. _He didn't deserve this. None of them deserved this.

"_John Wakefield rang the church bells and we all headed there thinking that someone else in our group was signalling," she explained. "Cal and Sully said the sail boat was gone and Trish and Chloe came too. He kidnapped Chloe right under our noses. We used the tunnels again – there was an entrance in the church and we thought that was where he'd taken her. Cal and Henry and I went down the tunnels. Everyone else blocked the other exits to keep Wakefield in. We had a map from dad's attic._

"_He killed Cal. He stabbed him through with that boarding knife in front of Chloe. She threw herself off the bridge," she described numbly. In response to prompting, she continued. "Henry and I had tried to shoot him. Neither of us could hit the broad side of a barn. He did save me from falling off the cliffs though._

"_Then Sully caught Wakefield," she smiled bitterly. It had been the point when things had started to go right, that it briefly looked like everyone left standing then would make it off the island. She only wished she'd been strong enough to kill him when given the chance, like her dad told her to. It might have all been over then. "We took him to the jail and locked him up in one of the cells. I went to get Shea and Madison from dad's attic and we sat around in the police station waiting for the others to come back."_

_What to tell them about what Wakefield had told her? She knew she ought to tell them the truth, the whole truth, but the truth was messy. She ought to tell them about the diary, definitely. And she ought to tell them what her dad had confessed to her about the first time Wakefield came to Harper's Island. Her dad framed a man for attempted murder of a police officer – a life sentence. Got him locked up for seventeen years for something he didn't do. And for what? Trying to get his girlfriend – was that even the right word? – to come back. They'd drag her dad's name through the mud for that, along with everyone else who'd been involved in the trial, and pin the blame on him entirely. But they had to know John Wakefield had dated her mother, however sick it made her feel to think about it now, and they had to know Wakefield had a son by her._

_But surely, as long as they found out the last two facts, how Abby had known wouldn't matter? Why couldn't Wakefield have just told her everything then? It wasn't really lying to the police if she didn't hold back the crucial details and stuck to the truth as much as possible. She decided a white lie would do._

"_Madison told me that Wakefield wanted to speak to me. He told me that, before mom met dad, he'd dated her and that she'd left when she – when she was carrying his child. He said she'd had his child but it wasn't me. The child was a boy. He came after her, followed her to Harper's Island. That's when he tried to kill Cole Harkin and dad sent him to prison. He killed her when he got out for taking his son away," she said quietly, looking at the table and hoping she wouldn't have to elaborate too much._

"_Whoa, whoa, wait," Carson interjected. "Why didn't you tell us – wait, okay, you didn't think to tell us this before?"_

"_You said there was no hurry."_

"_Was he sure? I mean, would he have known if your mother had aborted the child or miscarried?"_

"_He said he found his son. I don't know when or where. We thought he might be someone on the island – an accomplice – but John Wakefield killed or at least tried to kill all the men in our group. Henry only survived because he stabbed Wakefield first and was lucky enough to block Wakefield's knife with his arm. Did you find another man in the tunnels?" she asked belatedly, directing the question to Terry, who seemed to accept that her explanations would be long-winded and rambling._

"_No. Should there have been? Why would you think there was a second person in the tunnels?"_

"_Because Madison said she heard a second set of footsteps when she was down there."_

_There's a long silence as Abby looked at her hands and no one said anything. It was the woman who broke the silence eventually._

"_We've had people down those tunnels since we picked you and Mr. Dunn up. Believe me, there was no one down there. And we've got people all over the island trying to get word from the locals. We haven't found anyone hiding in the woods or bunking down in someone's cellar," Terry told her._

"_Are you sure the little girl was telling the truth?" Carson said to Abby's shock. "I mean, if she lied about your dad, could the footsteps be a lie too? It would have been a good one. Get us chasing after a ghost."_

"_No! I mean – I – I don't know. You can ask her. But we thought an accomplice must have helped him escape from the cell. None of us let him out."_

_Terry and Carson exchanged looks and Terry got to her feet, the chair squeaking a little on the polished floor. She left the room, apparently to tell the other cops the news that they should look for a possible accomplice._

"_What happened after you spoke to John Wakefield?" Carson prompted her to continue._

"_The others came back," she restarted, getting more comfortable at this now, especially if it meant he wasn't criticising her, "and they all thought Jimmy had been helping Wakefield. But he wasn't! When they were hiding in dad's attic, Shea and Madison found information on Jimmy. Dad had been investigating him. And some of the guys thought it was too suspicious that he'd survived the marina explosion and Wakefield hadn't killed him at the Cannery. We practically tore ourselves apart as a group. Jimmy came back saying that Trish had accidentally fallen over a cliff and Henry went mental. We had to pull him off Jimmy. Turns out he was telling the truth but he and Sully both nearly shot Jimmy on the beach when Trish wasn't there. She'd found the boat house with the radio. That's when we got in contact with the Coast Guard."_

"_The Monday. Yes, we have transcripts from the Coast Guard. Go on."_

"_J-Jimmy and I met Shea and Madison in the woods when we were walking back to the station. We'd left them there and Shea said Wakefield had escaped and killed Danny. We sent them back to the boat house to stay with Sully – Jimmy gave Shea our gun – and we went to find Henry and Trish to tell them the news. We found Trish. Wakefield had stabbed her. She was in her wedding dress! We thought Henry might have gone back to the boat house but no one was there. Jimmy spoke to the Coast Guard over the radio and they said Henry and Sully had spoken to them and were told to go to the Marina."_

And that's it. That's the bit I don't understand. Were the Coast Guard mistaken? Was Henry lying? Was something lost in translation? Maybe they only spoke to Sully and Sully promised to tell Henry and then didn't? Would Carson know? He just said he'd seen transcripts.

"_I'm a little – I don't know – the conversation between the Coast Guard and Sully and Henry. Was Henry definitely there? Because when I spoke to him later he asked me if I knew where we were meeting you. That was just before Wakefield tried to kill us both," she angled._

_Carson raised an eyebrow and shuffled the files in front of him, before pulling out what looked like a script from where Abby was sitting._

"_Hmmm... There was only one voice in the recording. Guess we'll have to see what Mr. Dunn says. OK, and after this conversation Mr. Mance had with us?" Carson waved a different script-sheet._

"_Umm, we met Henry and told him about Trish. He said he hadn't seen Sully but he was so upset about Trish we didn't think to ask him. We took him to where she was but Wakefield had taken her to the church. Henry was convinced she might still be alive – me and Jimmy knew she wasn't – and ran off to look for her and we ran after him. He cried when we found her in the church. I haven't seen him cry since – oh, JD. He cried then. And then John Wakefield appeared._

"_He attacked Jimmy," she whispered, the seconds replaying themselves slowly in her head. "Henry couldn't shoot without hitting Jimmy. And Jimmy told me to run. The helicopter. I had to get to the helicopter. And the gunshot. And Henry said he was gone. I didn't – uh, that's when he asked me if I knew where we were supposed to meet the Coast Guard. I nearly got him killed standing there instead of running! I didn't know what I was thinking and he took a knife out and just pushed me over. John Wakefield had been right behind me and Henry killed him. I never even heard him. He stabbed Henry but he was okay. He was dead. Finally."_

"_And that's when you turned up."_

_Carson nodded slowly. "Well done for surviving. You know the press are all out there. Biggest murder spree in the country since God knows when. You're gonna be quite a major story for a while."_

_Abby paled. All she wanted to do at that point was curl up a soft bed and sleep for days, knowing that it was all over._

_The door banged as Terry barged back in, looking considerably less friendly than she'd been when she left five minutes earlier._

"_A few more questions, Miss Mills. Something about a diary."_


	4. What a tangled web we weave pt 3

Green and the woman stood in the doorway as she glanced at Henry and he smiled back at her. He was falling back into the usual routine of trying to make everyone like him and it was imperative that it should work on the people who'd be investigating his murders. _What are they discussing? Oh, of course, this is the bit where the police with Abby say that my story regarding Sully is suspicious and Green gives them my perfectly reasonable explanation. With any luck, the hot issue will be Abby's paternity rather than my one tiny stupid stupid slip up. _He sighed and looked back at Hernandez.

"Mr. Hernandez, I haven't had a good night's sleep since Thursday night. How long will this take? I just want to go home."

"Sorry, but we will need to take you through everything and establish a series of events and generally figure out what happened on that island."

"What is there to establish? A psycho serial killer murdered his way through my wedding."

"There's a bit more than that, Mr. Dunn," Green said, closing the door and sitting back down opposite him. "An accomplice. According to the others, you were all pretty suspicious that someone was helping Wakefield. Perhaps someone in your party. A mole."

Henry sighed, more to convey the impression of tiredness than boredom. "We never knew for sure. Apparently Madison heard footsteps when she was down in the tunnels. She said someone brought her food. That was all we knew. Everything else was guess work."

_The evidence for an accomplice was pretty slim. My footsteps on the trip I made to get food to the wretched girl. I should've known then that my father was planning to keep her alive and use her as a pawn in his personal revenge plan against the Sheriff. I was too focused on getting back to the others. But that's not too bad. She could be lying. She repeated the lies my father asked her to tell about Charlie. Or the sounds could have been echoes or a recording. Fresh food could have been kept down there. Easy, it was all a plan to disrupt the group harmony by getting us to chase our own tails._

"And what did you guess?" Green had obviously had plenty of sleep and little patience for a poor man who'd spent nearly eighty hours awake and trying to surreptitiously murder his friends, before making a last minute change-of-plan that involved delaying sleep for a few more hours.

"Me or the group in general?"

"Both."

"Me – I didn't know. We were all kinda annoyed with Madison after she lied about Charlie. Did she tell you about that? She told everyone the Sheriff had kidnapped her and Abby went off alone to confront him and nearly got murdered. Some of us didn't believe her. It sounds dumb but – I don't know. Wakefield just seemed to do everything, be everywhere at once. Would you understand what I meant if I said the man had powers? He just didn't tire. So when Madison said that there were two people holding her most of us either thought then that there were two people and we'd only seen one or she was making that up too," he rambled, then paused as if he'd suddenly thought of something.

"Did you find someone?" he asked incredulously.

"Nope," Hernandez replied, consulting a fresh pile of notes. "Not a sign. No one down there in the tunnels and nothing that suggests that more than one person lived there."

"Abigail Mills and Shea Allen say that someone in your group might have given him the keys to the jail cells," Green stated, leaving it hanging. He seemed more than happy to let his witness fill in the blanks and Henry had to check himself constantly to make sure he wasn't giving answers to questions that hadn't been asked yet.

"Yeah, he escaped when most of us had gone off to find Trish. Jimmy Mance came back saying she'd fallen off a cliff. You've got to understand – Shea had just told us that Charlie had a file on Jimmy in an attic otherwise filled with information on John Wakefield. After Madison told us that there was possibly someone else, we all thought – well, you can imagine. Sully, Abby and I went with him when we went to look for her," he started to explain, making sure his rambles covered the bases. "We never thought we'd be putting the kid at risk by leaving her there. Sully said that – wait, did you find Danny?"

They both nodded, but didn't elaborate. _Damn, am I ever going to find out what my dad did to him?_

"I have no idea how he managed to get a key. We should have killed him, shouldn't we? We should have just shot him when Sully caught him."

"Who was there when you locked him up? Who could have given him a key if he got it that way?"

"Me, Abby, Sully and Danny were the ones who caught him. Shea and Madison were at the police station too. Mr. Green – none of them could have been helping him! They were good people! They were my friends! If I hadn't picked up the knife from the boat house," he paused to wave his bandaged arm under the officers' noses, "I'd be dead just like them. Who's to say Wakefield didn't carry a key on him?"

"Did you search him before putting him in the cell?"

_And now is the point where I pretend to be useless and incompetent._

"We emptied him pockets," Henry said after a pause, looking between the men as if he wanted their approval for a course of action Abby couldn't contradict. _Ah, Abby, I'm so sorry I'll have to put you through this. But when we're done absolving me of any involvement, I'll make it all better and you won't have any cause to show me those accusing eyes again. _"He had stuff in there. Knifes. Rope. Wire." Green and Hernandez both looked at him silently; the plan was clearly to allow him to talk as much as possible. "We thought that was it. None of us really wanted to go near him."

"You didn't think that someone who'd planned a murder spree might have an emergency get-out-of-jail-free plan?" Hernandez asked incredulously. To Henry's hidden delight, Green looked as if he was considering the idea that Wakefield hadn't needed an accomplice at all.

"Oh god. Oh god. We should have searched him properly. This is all my fault. We got Danny killed. I'm so sorry," Henry pleaded into his hands, before throwing out what he hoped was a flawless explanation. "He must have taken keys off Charlie Mills when he killed him."

_After all, why shouldn't Wakefield have taken them? He improvised as he went. He was smart enough to consider the possibility of capture. OK, the back-up plan was that I get a key to him and make myself scarce before he broke out, but the other plan is completely plausible. He took the Sheriff's uniform to greet the state troopers before killing them and the Sheriff's vehicle to drop that bastard fisherman off at the Cannery. Bastard. Bastard. Fucking bastard. No, he's dead now and I still can't show any hatred towards that bastard. How dare he think he – No, keys. Yeah, he took them from Charlie, we missed them on a quick search and he escaped after hearing most of us leave._

"I'm so sorry. How was he even alive? He was supposed to be dead! Charlie Mills found his body! There was a body in his grave! Abby and I dug it up and there was a body there. Why would – I don't understand. I don't understand how this happened. He killed Trish. He killed my little brother. He killed Sully. Why didn't you know he wasn't dead?"

While Hernandez didn't look old enough to have been a cop during the 2001 murders, Green must have been. The younger officer turned to his partner, who shrugged.

"The reports we got from the Sheriff and the doctor there said the body they buried was definitely John Wakefield. Sheriff Mills shot him in self-defence. We knew Wakefield had killed Mills' wife – we didn't want to dig too hard. It would only have made it worse for him," Green said, seemingly knowledgeable about Wakefield's first murder spree, to Henry's surprise. "Apparently Sheriff Mills continued to hunt the man though."

"That must be why he sent Abby away. He thought Wakefield would come back for her. I mean, if she was his daughter. Kill her mother and take his daughter away with him. That must – oh god, Abby can't be taking this well. You're not going to hold her here, are you?" Henry asked. _They can't take her away from me now. And more importantly, I need to know what she's told them._ "She can stay with me. I have an apartment on the other side of the city."

"According to Abby, the child Sarah Mills took from him was a boy."

"What?!" Henry was amazed. _How the hell does Abby know that? How did she find out? She can't have guessed. I'm innocent and I have a bandaged gash on my arm to prove it._

"Ms. Mills says she spoke to John Wakefield in the police station when he was locked up," Green elaborated from the notes the female officer had given him. "Wakefield told her that he'd dated her mother before she came to Harper's Island and she'd given birth to a son before she'd even met Charlie Mills."

_Oh, Dad, you idiot. You told her? I know you wanted to show off how much better your child was than Charlie Mills' child, but not then. Not before I could silence you. Now I'll have to convince Abby that you were lying for some reason and the police that one of you is lying. Why does this have to be so difficult?_

"But – that doesn't make any sense. Abby's mother never had a son. Abby doesn't have a brother. She always envied me for having JD. I knew Sarah Mills. I was 20 when she died. I knew her. She never mentioned a son." _Cold-hearted bitch that she was. _"She wouldn't have put a son up for adoption or whatever and then brought a daughter up with the love and attention that Abby got. I knew her and I can't imagine that."

"So why would he say that?" Hernandez asked.

"The man was a psycho! Are you going to believe him? I don't know. I don't – I mean, maybe he does have a son but I don't know how Mrs. Mills could have had a son none of us knew about," Henry insisted. The "Wakefield-has-a-son" theory had to die as quickly as Wakefield's victims had done or someone would speculate that perhaps the simplest explanation – that Abby was John Wakefield's daughter and Sarah Mills' only child – was wrong.

The two detectives seemed to drop the matter and took Henry through the long and arduous process of describing the entire week. Henry was delighted to give the account, being the only living witness to several events and an infallible witness to others, and didn't hesitate at all in covering up for all the murders he'd performed there. Ben Wellington, Reverend Fain, Thomas Wellington, Richard Allen, Malcolm Ross, JD Dunn, Katherine Wellington, Trish Wellington, Christopher Sullivan, Jimmy Mance. The only kill he admitted to and described in great detail was the one in defence of Abby, that of John Wakefield, and he tried to make that sound so awful that the detectives would hopefully think he'd never have the stomach to kill someone in cold blood. In his mind the list wasn't that impressive, compared to the ones his father had taken down, but then again, his father wasn't going for subtlety or planning to protest his innocence.

It was easy following the stories he had told the others. It was one of the rules John Wakefield had taught him: always stick to your story. So Ben had never turned up to the boat. The rest had been butchered by the evil all-powered psychopathic serial killer John Wakefield and there simply weren't any witnesses to those deaths or at least the engineering of them. JD Dunn and Jimmy Mance were the only two that Henry had been present for and Abby would back him up in both cases.

_Why do they always expect the guilty party to crack under questioning?_

It felt like an hour before Green left the room and Hernandez told him he was under no circumstances to leave Seattle without notifying the police first. Henry agreed to be the one to identify all the bodies – there was no way he'd make Abby do that – and so he'd be there in the morning.

He was free to go.


	5. What a tangled web we weave pt 4

_The damned diary. She now felt considerably dumb for imagining that she wouldn't be asked about it. She nodded sadly as Terry sat down opposite her._

"_Wakefield's diary," Abby said quietly. "Cole Harkin had it."_

"_Henry Dunn and Shea Allen have told us all about it. You knew your mother had had John Wakefield's child before you spoke to him on Monday. You knew on Saturday night after JD Dunn was killed," Terry read from the notes. Shea had probably told them everything._

_She nodded as Carson took the notes from his partner and glanced over them. Terry looked hard at Abby and Abby had to break eye contact and look down at the table. _It's all going to come out. They're going to find out what my dad did. Do they have the diary? _For the life of her, she couldn't remember what had happened to it. Keeping hold of a serial killer's diary hadn't seemed that important when her first and only priority was to avoid being murdered by said serial killer. _Why did Shea and Henry have to tell them? What if Wakefield wrote about the trumped-up charges? What if they investigate my dad? No, I'm being stupid and obstructive. Of course they told the police the truth. _Weighing it up in her head, she decided to tell them everything but her father's confession. Neither Shea nor Henry knew about that so they couldn't have said anything. The secret could be buried with her father._

"_Cole Harkin had most of the diary. He gave it to my dad. I rescued it from the fire Saturday evening. We still thought it was a copycat then so we thought whoever it was had seen the diary and was using it to imitate Wakefield. JD had pages torn from it. We found them – J-J-Jimmy found them in JD's pocket and gave them to Henry. Henry showed us them afterwards. Wakefield had written that my mother had his child. That was it. 'Sarah had my child'. They all though it was me," she told the table._

"_Anything else you forgot to tell us, Ms. Mills?" Terry sounded harsh and Abby wished she still had a friendly officer with her._

"_No," she lied. "It was just the diary. Everyone thought I was his daughter. Sully was even scared of me. I've known him for years. He's been Henry's friend since school. And Shane tried to lock me out of the Candlewick. I can't blame them. Even I thought – I didn't know either. I thought I might have been Wakefield's daughter until dad said I wasn't."_

"_Sheriff Mills told you that you weren't?" Carson said, looking up at her._

_Abby nodded, remembering the awful scene. It hadn't been more than twenty-four hours ago but it felt like weeks. "I asked him. Right before he died. I still thought it was him then. That he had killed all those people and that he had taken Madison. Because Wakefield made Madison lie to us. I thought I'd triggered it all. I – I – Dad told me that John Wakefield was alive and I didn't believe him. And I said he was obsessed with Wakefield and I thought that it was because he'd seen me again. I thought – when my mom died, dad broke down. Only the next day when I came back because I'd spent the night at Nikki's, he was drinking and said mom deserved it. In anger, you understand. I didn't understand back then, but I thought I did just before he died. I thought he'd hated me because he knew I was the child of the man who killed his wife and couldn't bear to look at me anymore._

"_I was wrong! He said no. I was his daughter. Not Wakefield's. He looked horrified. He didn't even know. What Wakefield told me later – my mom never told dad about her other child. He said – my dad said – just before he died that I was definitely his daughter and that I had to be the one to finish Wakefield. That I was stronger than him and that I had to be the one to kill him," she finished._

"_Any witnesses to that conversation?" Carson replied bluntly._

_For a second, Abby didn't understand. "What?"_

"_Did anyone else hear what Sheriff Mills said to you?"_

"_Err, no. It was just me and dad. No – Wakefield was listening over a radio. He heard every word," she remembered with bitterness. "He was evil. Pure evil."_

"_Would Sheriff Mills have known if you'd been John Wakefield's child?"_

"_I – No, he was sure. If he knew I wasn't his or there was any doubt, he would have told me."_

"_Before or after he said that you'd have to kill the man?"_

_Abby recoiled, suddenly realising what was going on._ They can't honestly think that I'm John Wakefield's daughter. But they do. They think I'm lying.

"_Why didn't you kill him?" said Terry suddenly._

"_What?"_

"_Your father told you to kill John Wakefield. A man who killed your mother, destroyed your life and was now back and killing your friends. Then he killed your father. Yet when you caught him and Christopher Sullivan told you to kill him, you didn't. No jury would have convicted you. Why didn't you kill him then?" she elaborated._

"_I didn't want any more blood spilt. I thought we should just lock him up and hand him over to the police when they arrived. No one thought he'd escape! I couldn't kill him then. I know I should have. All those people would still be alive. Danny. Trish. Sully. And Jimmy. Jimmy would be alive!" It abruptly struck her that, in that moment of pacifism, she'd condemned to death the only man she'd ever loved. And she was so happy in that moment that John Wakefield was dead, died with a knife in his cold empty heart._

"_And then it wasn't you who killed him at all. Henry Dunn did that," Terry finished._

"_Tell us again about the conversation you had with John Wakefield when he was locked up. Without lying or leaving anything out this time," Carson prompted._

"_Madison wandered into the cells. She came back saying that Wakefield wanted to speak to me. So I went in and I asked him what he'd done with Jimmy and Trish because they'd disappeared from the car and, even though some of the others thought Jimmy was involved, I knew he wasn't. He got angry when I talked about my dad. He called him 'your dad', 'your father'. And he laughed at me so I started to leave. Then he said he kept killing after my dad died because of me. He stood up against the bars and asked me if my mom had loved my dad. It was quite... sad really. If he hadn't killed her. Maybe he loved her once. He said, if my mom had loved my dad, why did she never tell him they had a child? I questioned him a bit. He suggested that I'd even thought that I was his child. He said if I was his, I've have worked out why he was back and why he was killing. I still don't know why. And he got angry saying that mom had thrown away his child but kept me. Then he said he knew his child definitely existed, that mom had definitely had the child because Wakefield tracked him down. A son."_

"_Did he tell you anything about this phantom son?"_

"_No. A fight broke out with the others. Jimmy had just got back and said Trish had fallen off the bluffs. So we left Shea and Madison there and me, Jimmy, Henry and Sully went to find Trish. I didn't have time to ask anything else," she replied. _

"_Did anyone witness this conversation either?"_

"_No," was all she could say. She hadn't even had time to tell Jimmy or Henry about it. All three men had been panicking over Trish's fate. "Why are you asking me this?"_

"_Well, it's like this. Either your mother had a son that she never mentioned again, never told your Sheriff Mills about, never told you about. A man no one ever knew and who you have no details on whatsoever. No name, no birth date, no description, no nothing. And this man simply wandered into the police station, handed John Wakefield the key to the cell and left again without anyone seeing him, despite the fact that there was always someone there. Maybe he helped out with the killing too, only no one ever saw him then either. And no one can find him now. A ghost._

"_Or the mysterious child your mother had by the man is her only child: you. The most obvious solution is sometimes the right one. Sheriff Mills told you that Wakefield was your father – "_

"_No!" Abby cut Carson off in horror._

"_Or he hesitated and you knew he didn't know for sure – "_

"_No!"_

"_And you panicked and told your friends that Sheriff Mills was your real father – "_

"_No! I didn't lie!"_

"_And that's why you didn't kill Wakefield when you caught him. Because you knew he was your biological father – "_

"_No!"_

"_And when the little girl told you he wanted to speak to you in private, he confirmed it and you gave him the key so he could escape – "_

"_No!"_

"_You were the only one who saw him alone, remember – "_

"_No!"_

"_Did he tell you he'd just go? That he wouldn't kill anyone else? Or that he'd spare the people you cared about, like Jimmy Mance?"_

"_No! I didn't!"_

"_I can understand why. Your parents lied to you, your real father turns up, murders a bunch of people to get your attention and then pleas with you when he gets caught. That's why he returned Jimmy to you, isn't it? No qualms about killing anyone else but he knew you loved Jimmy Mance so he saved him from the explosion and gave him back to you personally. It was a gift, a way of saying 'I'll murder all these people but not you and not the man you love because you're special'," Carson continued, rattling off a theory that Abby knew was wrong. She snapped._

"_He killed Jimmy! He shot Jimmy, practically in front of me! I'm not his child and I didn't give him the key!" she paused to gasp for breath. "I don't know how he escaped but it wasn't me."_

"_Did you refuse?" Terry said suddenly. Her partner had been talking so much that Abby had nearly forgotten the woman was there, quietly taking notes. "Did he tell you that you were his daughter and asked you for the key and you said no? You said you wanted nothing to do with him, that Charlie Mills would always be your real father and that you didn't care what happened to him. You refused to give him the key and walked away. That would be completely understandable. And maybe you panicked and thought your friends would abandon you or lock you up with him if you told them the truth so you made up a child that couldn't possibly be you: a boy your mother gave up before she met your dad. You wouldn't have been doing anything wrong. But you can tell us now."_

"_No," Abby said again, quieter this time._

Oh dear god no. Why are they saying this? Why don't they believe me? Is it because they can't find Wakefield's son on the island? Maybe he's not even there. But I know! Dad may not have known anything about a child but Wakefield was sure. He was sure when he told me I was too stupid to be his child and he was sure when he told me he found his son. Why didn't I take someone in with me to witness this? Henry was there. He'd have done it and be backing me up now. And they can't think I was involved, even just to let him escape. He killed everyone I loved and they think I was helping him.

"_You rejected him and in revenge he killed the person you cared about the most – your boyfriend, Jimmy," Terry continued in her calm, steady voice. "But he wasn't going to hurt you. What would have happened if Henry Dunn hadn't picked up a knife from the boat house earlier? What would have happened if you'd both been completely unarmed? John Wakefield would have killed Henry – he tried to kill him – and then there would have been only you left. That doesn't look good."_

"_Ask Henry. Ask Shea. They'll both tell you I had nothing to do with this. If I could go back, I'd have shot him when we caught him like my dad told me to. My dad. Sheriff Charlie Mills."_

"_We've asked them both. Mrs. Allen doesn't know. Mr. Dunn seems to think that you're John Wakefield's daughter but seems convinced that you're innocent of everything else," she said coolly._

What? Henry can't think that. He knows I would've told him if – but maybe he doesn't. He knows I'm not involved and that's good. That's more than the police know. But to think I'm the reason Wakefield came back... He didn't hear my dad telling me I was his daughter; he only found me afterwards, hysterical. He didn't hear Wakefield telling me about his son; he was arguing with Jimmy about Trish. I need to tell Henry this. He thinks I'm the reason his wedding was ruined and that everyone he knows is dead. And that he nearly died himself.

"_Christopher Sullivan thought so too," Terry interrupted her thoughts. "Mr. Dunn said that he and Mr. Sullivan argued in the woods after speaking to the Coast Guard because Christopher was convinced that you were Wakefield's daughter. He became upset and angry and wanted to go straight to the marina, rather than finding you. So he gave Henry his gun and left to head straight there. Of course, he ran into John Wakefield and died. When he was alone, Henry Dunn started feeling pretty suspicious about you. Apparently that's why he lied about not seeing Mr. Sullivan when he found you again."_

My god. That's why Henry lied to me. He thought he couldn't trust me. He must have thought I gave Wakefield the key when I spoke to him. I need to tell him what Wakefield said!

"_Well, I'm not. Surely there must be – "_

_The door banged open as an older policeman came in. He looked a good twenty-five years older than the couple sitting opposite her. Carson stood up and moved to lean against the wall behind Abby as the older man sat down next to Terry._

"_Ms. Mills. A couple of questions."_

_She nodded. The sooner the police found out the truth, the sooner they'd know she was completely innocent._

"_Sheriff Mills – what did he carry around with him? In his uniform, I mean."_

_She didn't understand the point of the question but answered nonetheless. "I don't know really. His radio. His car keys. His cell phone. Evidence collecting kits. Maybe a map of the island. Sometimes a rifle, although they were usually locked up at the station. I hadn't seen him in years. I can't remember."_

"_Try."_

"_What should he have been carrying?"_

"_Think hard, Ms. Mills. This was after he'd locked JD Dunn and Shane Pierce up. Would have have been carrying a key to the jail cells?"_

"_Err, I – I don't know," she stuttered before suddenly realising the man's point. "You think John Wakefield had a key on him before we locked him up! You think he took it off my dad! Well, yes. Yes, he would have being carrying the key. Wakefield took it off him."_

We were chasing a ghost. There was no accomplice wandering into the police station. Wakefield screwed us over.

_After a few more minutes of answering more questions to the best of her ability, Terry told her that she could go. She wasn't a suspect. Henry had offered her a place to stay. She wasn't to leave Seattle without telling them first. They'd keep her up to date about any developments._

_As she walked to the door, Abby caught her reflection in the mirrored glass. _I look ugly. I look tired. I look dirty. But I'm not that monster's child.


	6. After every tempest come such calms pt 1

Standing outside in the corridor, Henry closed his eyes. He hadn't been lying that much to Hernandez: he was genuinely tired. All he wanted to do was take Abby back to his apartment, put her safely to bed and then sleep. She was safe now. His father was dead and he had been the only threat to Abby's well-being and existence in general.

_I can't believe I did it. John Wakefield, dead, finally. And Abby safe with me. And me pretty much off the hook. They'll never believe Madison's ramblings about footsteps in the tunnels. The kid has "liar" written all over her. And I've got a badge of innocence to show off to both the Allens and the rest of the world. My dad's final action. _Even though he'd known for years that his father would have to die to guarantee Abby's safety, Henry still felt the loss. His father was the only one who understood the dark side of him, the only one who had ever saw the dark side of him and lived to reflect on it. Except Abby of course and her disbelieving horror was the reason she wasn't lying unconscious in a little house on the island. _My father's last action was to stab me. Damn it, his last thoughts were knowing that I loved Abby more than him. He never understood how much I loved her. He thought love could only damage a man, not heal him like Abby will do for me. He tried to kill me to keep me from her. He deliberately got out a knife he didn't think he'd have to use again and cut me in the arm. But... why the arm? Why not the neck, where a deep stab wound have hit the carotid artery and killed me within seconds? Or the chest, a bigger target for a dying man, where I'd have bled out before the Coast Guard arrived? Or even the femoral artery in my thigh? I'd have expected a better effort for an experienced murderer trying to kill me._

_He wasn't trying to kill me._

_Damn it, he wanted to give me a flesh wound. Damn it. The last thing my father ever did for me was make me look innocent in front of Abby. _He felt a sudden pang of affection and appreciation for the man. _He wanted me to look innocent. He wanted Abby to see me as a hero. He approved – No, he never approved and never would have. Maybe he just understood how I felt and wanted me to have a chance with her. Damn it, why couldn't he have done this before we'd started butchering people? He stabbed me in the arm. He really loved me._

Henry's train of thought was cut off abruptly as a girl with wet hair and a towel around her shoulders barged past him and into a door marked "ladies" at the other end of the corridor. It brought him instantly back to reality and the realisation that he didn't have a plan. Oddly, this fact didn't panic him in the slightest. It made him feel free. The non-plan plan for the next hour was simple: wait for Abby to come out, take her home, look after her.

In the awful knowledge that, without cash or credit cards, he'd have to get a lift from someone, Henry went to the desk to beg a few coins for a phone call.

"Hello. You're through to Hometown Press. Oliver Melvin speaking."

"Ollie. It's Henry. Henry Dunn."

"You're alive! The news is everywhere, man, it's like... the calls coming in here, it's been insane. I didn't really know what to do and I couldn't get in contact with you and – "

"Ollie. I need a lift."

"Uhh, now? Because it's been kinda busy and I'm up to, like, my eyeballs in stuff and I've been on the phone for the past hour and I'm all on my own here and – "

"Ollie, I need you to drive to the police station to pick us up and then drive to my apartment. And I need you to do it now."

"Now isn't a great time, seriously, because, like, I'm a bit hungover and – "

"Ollie, if you turn up to work too hungover to drive a car, I'm going to fire you and hire someone else who can work computers. Seattle police station."

"I'll be there in twenty."

Replacing the receiver and looking around for Abby, who still hadn't appeared, Henry noticed a familiar face just coming in the entrance. _Mitch. What the hell is my lawyer doing here?_ He instinctively ducked around a corner, away from the eyes of the man who dealt with Hometown Press's occasional legal issues. He rationalised this by telling himself that if he started a long conversation with Mitchell Kenton, Abby would only materialise and he'd be forced to introduce her and he didn't want Abby meeting any new men. He wouldn't be entirely unhappy if Abby never spoken to another man but him for the rest of her life. He'd phone the man tomorrow about unrelated issues and see if he could figure it out that way. Henry Dunn didn't believe in coincidences and having his lawyer in the vicinity didn't feel right.

Sitting down on a hard plastic seat, Henry watched as Abby came out of a door, her hair in front of her face, and walk straight past him. He nearly got up to follow, only she took the same route as the earlier girl, straight into the ladies' room. _Maybe she's upset and wants to wash her face. I should look upset too. _His face moulded into the mask of grief he'd worn a lot lately as he waited for the love of his life to come and sit with him.

Instead, Madison did.

"Hello Henry!"

He tried to look pleased to see her and suspected that he failed.

"Is it true you killed John Wakefield?" she asked brightly, with Shea appearing just behind.

"Madison, give him some space. Henry, I'm so glad someone survived. Is it true what the police have been saying?"

"Yes," he replied. "I killed him. He came at me and Abby and so I stabbed him. I stabbed him in the heart. He did manage to cut me though." He showed his bandaged arm to an enthusiastic Madison.

"Are you going to die?"

"No. I'm alive. I'm not going to die."

She seemed disappointed at this.

"I will have a cool scar though."

"Henry, I – Madison, here, honey, get yourself something from the snack machine – my sister, what happened to her?" Shea said with a look of no hope on her face, after Madison had skipped down the corridor. "Is Trish alive?"

Henry could only shake his head. It would take some acting skills to show grief when all he felt was joy. Shea slumped down against the opposite wall, her face paler than usual and her hands shaking. She murmured something inaudible about what the police had said and he got up to sit down next to her on the floor. He took her hands gently.

"I'm sorry. We got separated in the woods and I couldn't find her again. She – John Wakefield killed her. I found her in the church, on the altar," he whispered, staring ahead.

"What did he do? How did she look?" Shea asked. Henry turned to catch her eye.

"Peaceful. Like nothing in this world could hurt her anymore. She was in her wedding dress. We knew she'd have to get another so she put the dress on to show me. She was so beautiful. She looked like an angel lying on the white cloth over the altar. There wasn't much blood. It would've been quick. It wasn't messy."

Shea screwed up her face and blinked back tears as her daughter returned with a chocolate bar and a few coins in change.

"As soon as mommy's lawyer get here, I get to talk to the police too! Where's Abby?" the kid asked.

_Ah, my favourite subject and an opportunity to spread a few rumours. _"She's just cleaning herself up in the ladies' room. I think she's a bit upset. I hope the police weren't too harsh about John Wakefield. It's got to be tough finding out you're the child of a serial killer. And I did kill him in front of her."

"Is that what the police think?" Shea put on her usual immaculate façade but here it was difficult and obviously fake, probably even to Madison.

Henry nodded, trying not to lay it on too thick. "There isn't really any other option. The police don't think she was involved though. They think Wakefield took a key from Sheriff Mills, after he kidnapped him from the clinic."

"Are we allowed to talk about Abby now, mommy?" Madison asked. Henry couldn't blame Shea for apparently having banned her daughter from asking awkward questions and started to worry how much Madison might carry this lie.

"Madison," he started. "This is very painful for Abby. She'd be very upset if you told people. Like reporters and your friends and people at school who might ask you about what happened."

"Why?"

"People might blame Abby for her father's actions," he tried to explain.

"Madison, honey," Shea interrupted. "You remember what the nice police lady said? We mustn't talk to any reporters about any of this. And spreading rumours is wrong."

Madison sat down on the chair to eat her chocolate and Shea beckoned Henry a little way away to a second set of chairs for what was clearly going to be a private conversation.

"Henry, I don't think John Wakefield can be Abby's father. I spoke to the police here. They told me a bit about him. About his time in prison."

"Yes. We know that, don't we? He spent just shy of eighteen years in prison for the attempted murder of Cole Harkin. That's what the newspaper clippings said. The 2001 murders were a few months after he was released," Henry tried to recall what was publicly known. Everyone had done plenty of research into Wakefield's background after the first rampage. He remembered with bitter irony the discussions he'd tried to have with Frank Dunn before his real father had tracked him down.

"No, no, not that. Not the date he went to prison. The original date of his arrest. Early August 1982. That was before Abby was even born," Shea told him excitedly. Henry wondered why on earth Shea knew Abby's date of birth, but that was hardly the point.

"Yes, nine months before Abby was born," he said deliberately.

"You think – ?"

"I don't know. I don't know a lot of things."

The dates were uncanny. So uncanny in fact that Henry had even asked his father on one occasion if Abby was his child too. For a hardened serial killer and her eventual murderer, John Wakefield had gotten very indignant and upset at the idea that he'd forced himself on his beloved Sarah. No, he'd just beaten her up a bit. Then Charlie Mills had found them and he'd found himself on the wrong end of several angry deputies. An ineffectual attempt to defend himself and suddenly he was on the slow road to court and then prison. No, Abby wasn't his daughter. She'd be far more intelligent if she was. Abby was probably a little celebration of the fact that, as a police officer, Charlie Mills was about to walk all over an innocent man's life. Henry had then pointed out that beating up his ex-girlfriend wasn't the best way to persuade her to leave her fiancé and come back to him. John, irate, had promptly pointed out to his son that Abby was still his sister and he still couldn't love her. It was the way a lot of their conversations about Abby ended.

But Henry wasn't about to tell Abby that and hoped he'd never have to. It wasn't that he'd couldn't make the theory convincing. It was that Abby sometimes had the tendency to shoot the messenger. When something bad happened around Abby, she'd shut down and block out everyone around her. He'd worked so hard to be on the inside of her grief this time that there was no way he'd risk being seen as the bearer of unpleasant news. Besides, the theory hinged on the fact that his father's conviction was a lie and Abby didn't know that. And everyone who could enlighten her was dead.

"What's going to happen now?"

"With Abby? She'll stay with me. I can't abandon her. I – to be honest, I blame myself for most of this. It was my wedding and we should have held it somewhere better. God, I'll never marry Trish now..." he trailed off, hoping Shea would take the hint and leave him alone before Abby reappeared. In the end it took Madison dragging a woman in a suit who introduced herself as a Wellington lawyer to make Shea leave him.

_Peace. Finally. _Henry closed his eyes for a long moment and, reopening them, there Abby was. The smile came naturally before the mask of sympathy fell back on. _Technically, Abby has lost people too. I wonder how long she'll grieve._

"I'm sorry for doubting you," he said, inviting her to sit next to him as he waiting for Ollie to turn up with their transport.

"I'm sorry too," she answered and the feel of her arm against his was all he needed. As long as he had her beside him, he could do anything.


	7. After every tempest come such calms pt 2

_Abby sat in a cubicle and stared at the door. For some reason she couldn't cry. Perhaps it was the shock of finding herself safely back in civilisation. Or perhaps it was finding that, even back in the real world, things were never going to be right ever again. When she closed her eyes, Thomas Wellington looked upwards. When she closed them again, JD Dunn clutched at a stab wound. And again, her father was hanging above her. Again, Jimmy yelled soundlessly at her to run. Her short sleep on the helicopter had been dreamless but restless and she wasn't looking forward to what dreams would come when she slept tonight, if she could. A final blink showed John Wakefield on the other side of those bars, talking silently about her mother. Her hand went automatically to her neck, to her mother's necklace for reassurance._

_Having taken the necklace all the way to L.A. with her seven years ago, Abby had always imagined that her mother had followed her with her spirit living within. Not trapped there and not needing to be set free, but settled there of its own volition to look after her. Giving it to Karena Fox had been deliberate; she shouldn't have disregarded those words. "He wants you dead." It should have been ample warning. _Mom warned me and I didn't listen. I ran away from Karena when she was trying to help mom speak to me._Wakefield had practically confirmed it later when he'd said he kept killing because of her. Abby added seeing the psychic again to a mental to-do list, before realising that she had no idea what else she had to do for the time being._

_The incessant buzzing of the hand-dryer stopped, something clattered and the buzzing started up again. She vaguely remembered a girl, her hair thrown over, by the sinks as she'd walked in. Seeing someone dry her hair under a hand-dryer seemed painfully mundane after the things she'd seen the past week. At least if she did cry, no one would be able to hear it over the noise._

I have to go. I have to face Henry. _She'd dashed past him in the corridor; the last thing she'd wanted to do was face the man who thought she was responsible for all his friends' deaths, albeit indirectly. And especially when she looked such a state. As soon as the other girl left, she'd splash some water on her face. So she was hiding in the cubicle until the buzzing stopped. But she was going to have to face him. Henry wasn't the type to abandon her. He'd offered her a place to stay._Maybe he feels sorry for me.

He'll believe me though. I'll tell him everything Wakefield told me and he'll understand it's not me. Maybe we can track the boy down together. No, man. He'd be older than me. _What Officer Carson had said was just sinking in. "Phantom son." There had to be more evidence than her word alone and then he'd have to admit he was wrong. She'd been brought up to see the police as friends – she was the daughter of a sheriff! – and the idea of being suspected of telling serious lies felt like the dozenth punch in the gut of the week._

_Closing her eyes, she saw John Wakefield's last moments again. Appearing behind her. Getting Henry's hastily-produced knife in his heart. Slashing at Henry. Falling and dying on the forest floor. Something about the scene looked peculiar but she ascribed it to shock more than anything else. The realisation that the monster had gotten so close to her and Henry without either of them seeing was terrifying and got worse every time she considered it. She pushed the recent memory to the back of her mind._

Well, I can't stay in here forever._Wandering out to the sinks, she washed her hands quickly, then filled her cupped hands with water and threw it upwards over her face. A look in the mirror showed that, surprisingly, she looked a lot better. And Henry had seen her looking worse, if she was completely honest._

"_Excuse me, can I get to that?"_

_The girl shuffled to one side as Abby blew hot air onto her face and hands. Combing her hair in the mirror with her fingers afterwards, she caught a brief glimpse of the girl's face before the brunette hair went over again. She looked familiar, but then again a whole conga line of celebrities could have walked through the bathroom without Abby noticing or caring and she wasn't feeling up to starting a conversation with a stranger._

_She took a deep breath and pulled the door open, walking out into the corridor. Henry was sitting alone on a plastic chair, his eyes closed, looking exhausted. She'd never been so pleased to see him. She knew she shouldn't compare her briefly-resumed relationship with Jimmy to Henry's relationship with Trish, years long and ideally ending with a perfect flowery wedding, but she wanted to cling to her best friend and pretend her grief in love was equal to his._

_He looked up as she stood in front of him and smiled. The way his face fell after a few seconds felt like another punch in the gut._He smiles at seeing his best friend and then remembers that he thinks it's all her fault his fiancée and friends are dead. I can't let him think of me this way.

"_I'm sorry for doubting you," he said, patting the seat next to him._He feels bad for doubting me? We both made the same mistakes. He thought I was lying about my dad and Wakefield, which led him to lie about Sully. Him lying about Sully led me to stop and question him in the woods when we could have both been killed. I need a lesson in trust.

"_I'm sorry too," she replied, sitting next to him. He didn't jump away when her arm leaned again his, which was a good sign. A long silence followed and Abby twitched as she wondered what to say that wasn't "I'm really not John Wakefield's child because he said he had a son" because she didn't want to have the argument there and wasn't completely irrelevant. She eventually hit on sorting her mystery to-do list. "They said I could stay at yours. That you would let me stay at your apartment."_

_He nodded. "Yeah. Don't worry about anything. Someone's picking us up in, uhh, any minute now. We should go wait outside."_

_A young man with a dirty blond ponytail turned up as they reached the doors and waved frantically at Henry. He led them outside to a rather beat-up car and Henry held the door open for her as they got in. She leaned into his shoulder and tried to ignore the strange stains on the upholstery and the abundance of air fresheners hanging from the roof._

"_Hi, Henry. Sorry I took so long. And this must be Trish! I know we haven't met before. I'm Ollie," he gabbled, reaching a hand over the driver's seat. "I work for your husband. Great guy. I don't know why he hasn't introduced me before. You two – I can't imagine what you've both been through – but you look great together. Like me and Hayley."_

_She froze at the mistake, unable to catch his eye or raise her limp hand to shake his. Breaking herself out of it, she glanced up at Henry, who looked like he'd been slapped. She watched his lips move silently before he finally spoke, flat and emotionless._

"_This is Abby. She's my best friend. Trish is gone."_

"_Gone where?"_

"_Trish is dead. Everyone's dead. John Wakefield killed them."_

"_Oh. Erm – I – uhh..." He started the car in the silence that followed. As soon as they pulled away, he started up again. "Oh, there was something else I wanted to mention. The work thing. I wasn't sure exactly what I had to do but – "_

"_Ollie, please don't talk shop now," Henry interrupted, looking close to tears. Abby squeezed his shoulder supportively. "Tomorrow. I'll be at the office tomorrow. I can't deal with it now."_

_The rest of the ride back was quiet. The car dropped them outside the block of luxury apartments and Henry helped her out onto the sidewalk. She watched him nod at Ollie and heard the unhealthy noise of the car driving off behind her. As Henry tapped at the keypad, she watched pedestrians walk past them obliviously; they lived in a different world where serial killers didn't come back from the dead. Tomorrow they'd stop and stare at her._

"_You'll be okay here," Henry whispered as they waited for the elevator, which pinged as its doors opened. She could only nod in return. Perhaps she'd have a nap before the impending John Wakefield argument. His couch had to be comfy; she hadn't been exaggerating that much when she'd spoken to Nikki about Henry being loaded. She was falling asleep on his shoulder already but laughed at his offer to carry her from the elevator to his front door. Instead she walked unsteadily and slouched against the wall as he unlocked the door, before turning to her._

"_Wait here. I'll be two minutes."_


	8. After every tempest come such calms pt 3

"Wait here. I'll be two minutes," Henry told the love of his life as she leaned against the wall outside his front door and he stepped inside. He'd had a wondrous mental image of carrying Abby in bridal style – after all, she was the one he was going to marry – but it was probably best that she waited outside while he cleaned up. He looked around the living room and sighed.

It stood to reason that anyone knowing that they were going to die would sort out their affairs beforehand. People going to commit suicide or wither away from illness or old age – or possibly going to fake their deaths – would try to make it as easy as possible for those who had to clean up afterwards. Making a will, settling debts, paying bills and leaving explicit instructions for anything else. Even little things like giving away pot plants, finding new homes for pets and throwing out food that would expire. Finding these all sorted would have raised all kinds of alarm bells for the police. Hence, Henry had left his apartment in a state of moderate chaos. His business affairs too, but that was a natural consequence of leaving Devon and Ollie in charge for the last few weeks under the excuse that Henry had wedding and honeymoon business to attend to.

_Right, two minutes. What's most important?_

He started with the photo frames on the shelves and cabinet, picking up any that displayed any of his victims and shoving them in the back of a cupboard. He smiled as he laid Trish face down, remembering lowering her body to the forest floor. All the Wellingtons. The Dunns, his fake family. His college friends. _An innocent man wouldn't want to see these anymore and Abby certainly won't. I'll go through them properly when I have time. Abby can't think about these people anymore. They were in our way and I won't have them disturbing the harmony in our home._ Dashing into his bedroom, he checked the bed linen. _Looks clean but it's slept in. I'll change it for Abby to sleep in later. Looks like it's the couch for me._A thorough pace around the rooms reassured Henry that there was nothing incriminating for Abby to find; of course there wouldn't be, given that Henry knew the police might go through everything. _OK, the place is Abby-safe._Doubling back to the kitchen to grab a bin liner, he saw Abby in the doorway, looking half-asleep. He smiled weakly at her.

"Sorry, I left the place in a bit of a mess. Just going to empty the bins. I'll put some clean sheets on the bed for you in a minute. Just sit down for now. You don't have to do anything. Coffee?"

"Yes. Wait, no. I'm going to sleep. You can just – Can I get some blankets for the couch?" she muttered, sitting down on the couch and closing her eyes. _The couch? No, Abby, I'm going to treat you better than that. Far better._

"No, you sleep in my bed. I sleep on the couch." And then as she opened her mouth to protest, "No, don't argue. You want some food? When's the last time you ate?"

"At the Cannery," she whispered. Delaying the bins, Henry rooted around in the fridge and kitchen cupboards for something tasty and quick to cook. A small carton of fresh and in-date chicken soup jumped out at him and Abby gratefully accepted a portion.

Ten minutes later, they were sitting on the floor together with their backs against the couch with hot soup in bowls. Abby looked like any sharp movement would make her throw the soup back up. She still seemed to be in shock and it bothered Henry that he was supposed to be in emotional hell right then too. It was all he could do not to put an arm around her shoulders and tell her that everything was going to be perfect now and ask if she liked her new home. His own happiness was so closely tied to hers. But Abby would recover. She was strong and resilient and he loved her for it. A further ten minutes later and Abby was lying in his bed, on clean sheets, and Henry was in the living room trying to make the couch comfortable with some winter blankets. Sleep beckoned him and he dozed with a small smile on his face. A new plan would seem much simpler in the morning. He shouldn't think about it now.

_She's in your bed._

_I know._

_She's in your bed._

_So what? She's sleeping._

_No she isn't. Listen to her breathing._

Closing his eyes and straining to hear the sound over the evening traffic, he could hear her inhale and exhale quietly. It wasn't the soft sound of sleep; he could hear the irregular breaths and _is she sobbing? I should – No I shouldn't. She'd want privacy._

_She doesn't need privacy. She needs comfort. If you want to be the one she gets it from, go in there now. You need her dependent on you. Cuddle her or something. Offer her hot chocolate. A shoulder to cry on. A warm body in bed beside her. Offer her –_

_No! Not yet!_

_Well if you don't think you can control yourself..._

_I need sleep too. I can't rush this. Dear god, I need a new plan. Well, I can't make my move until the police investigation dies down and a few months have passed. Stupid society demands that I should be mourning Trish and Shea will expect no less. It's the 29th__September today so let's say... by Christmas, she'll be mine._

_If you'd taken her to your real home, she'd be yours now._

Henry tried to silence the mental argument and wondered what he would be doing right now if they were still on the island. Worrying about rumours of an accomplice. Pulling dust sheets off furniture. Putting Abby to bed. Knowing he'd face her eyes when she woke up from her drug-induced sleep and sitting her down to explain everything that he'd done. But her sleep would be restful. _What would I be doing now? With a helpless, unconscious Abby?_He decided he didn't want to think about it. He needed sleep and fantasising about what he wanted to do to Abby wasn't helping.

~~xx~~

He woke at some odd hour to see Abby standing in the doorway from his bedroom, framed with the light from a bedside lamp behind her. She was wearing his dressing gown and her hair was mussed up.

"Hey? Is something wrong?" he said while getting up to turn the lights on, before realising the answer was an obvious yes.

"Can't sleep. I can't stop them. Every time I close my eyes," she mumbled. He could fill in the blanks. He was by her side in seconds and pulled her into a tight hug. It reminded him of their time together after JD's death, when he'd cried over his fake brother's body and Abby had held him for ages. He was sure Abby would have held him for hours if he'd asked. The whole situation with JD's escape had been a mess. He was supposed to have been the lone survivor, kept locked in a police cell, who'd tell the police that everyone else was dead. Instead he'd nearly made it out to sea and to the mainland to get the police several days too early for Henry's plan to work. Poor JD only realised in the last few seconds of his life that the line of the sheets of diary he'd been holding – "Sarah had my child" – referred to him. He cringed every time he thought of how close Abby had come to catching him. _If she had... I would have had to knock her out and hand her over to my father to keep in the tunnels, and hope he wouldn't scare her too badly before we could finish off the others._Only Katherine Wellington had come nearer to catching him and, by the time she'd realised what he'd been doing, the drugs in her drink were kicking in and he could stab her with little commotion. His father had never appreciated how difficult it was to be the mole. But his father had never appreciated Abby either and the woman was going to be his wife. "Do you have anything that can help me sleep?"

"No sleeping pills if that's what you're after. I might have something to drink, if that'll help."

"Mmm... Got any more chicken soup?" she asked and he hid an elated grin at how much he could do for her.

"No, but it's only – wait, where's my watch? – eight. You spent an hour and a half lying awake? We could get take-away. Chinese? Indian? Pizza? Whatever you want. Here, what do you want to drink?"

Henry ended up ordering a large cheesy pizza over the phone. They sat on the floor sharing the last dribble of a bottle of vodka from his near-empty liquor cabinet between them with coke. He didn't like to see her drink too much. She'd have him and he'd be everything she needed. _I'll heal her and she'll heal me._

"You know it's not me, don't you?" she asked, looking at the carpet as she swirled the weak drink around the glass, before taking a long sip. He nodded.

"Of course. You wouldn't be here – I'm – You can't imagine how bad I feel for thinking you had anything to do with Wakefield's escape. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I lied about Sully. He – He said some things about you and I'm sorry I even considered them. I feel so stupid for not trusting my best friend. But it's over now. And we know what the police said about the key," he replied, choosing his words carefully. She looked up at him.

"No, I understand why – No. That wasn't what I meant. I meant you know that I'm not John Wakefield's daughter, right?" she said, meeting his eyes, her look almost pleading.

"Abby..." he said with what he hoped was the right amount of pity in his voice.

"I mean it, Henry. I'm not!" she threw back the last of her drink and put the glass up on a table, before curling round to face him.

"Abby – "

"You didn't hear what he told me. You weren't there when I talked to him. You need to know what he said."

_Too damn right. Tell me everything, Abby, and I'll know what I have to work with. Tell me exactly what my father said. It couldn't have been any more than a taunt, a boast, an insult to you. By the time the pizza gets here, I'll know how to tear down the ridiculous theory that your mother had another child. If John Wakefield had a child with her at all, it's you and can only be you. The sooner you accept the unpleasant fact, the sooner the police will leave us alone and the sooner I can discover that I've fallen in love with you._

"OK, tell me everything."

She did. As Abby narrated, Henry couldn't believe just how infuriatingly open his father had been. Even hearing the account second hand, the sincerity of John Wakefield's words came through. His dismissal of Charlie Mills. His disdain for Abby, the woman his son loved, and confirmation to her face that she wasn't his daughter. But also confirmation that she was the reason behind the killings, although Abby certainly wouldn't be able to guess the exact reason. A mixture of love and hatred for Sarah Mills. _Would I have been like that if I'd killed the woman I love? Forever obsessed?_And words that Abby could quote and that sent chills down Henry's spine. "Because I found him." If Abby had taunted that out of him by telling him that her mother had really loved her father, he could imagine his father rising to the bait. He felt rather proud of Abby if she'd done it deliberately. _My future wife is not the idiot you tried to paint her as, dad. She told you what you already knew and got enough out of you to nearly ruin me._

As Abby closed by insisting that he had to believe her, Henry drained his glass and wondered what to attack first. Accusing Abby of lying or omitting details would have the same effect as trying to sleep platonically with her tonight: at the very minimum, she'd realise something was wrong and place some distance between them the next morning. Then she'd leave for L.A. as soon as the investigation was over. And he wasn't having her escape from him. So John Wakefield must have been lying or mistaken.

Alternatively, he could smile and tell her that he was wrong again. She wasn't Wakefield's child and somewhere out there was the son that Wakefield was so proud of. _No, that's my back-up plan. For now I'll play the impartial juror, weighing up the evidence. But I can't go persistently against her or she'll see me as an enemy. I either have to remain vague, staying on her good side and hoping she accepts the theory that Wakefield is her father, or be very determinate in insisting to everyone else that she is, hopefully guaranteeing my innocence but having her hate me. Vague it is then._

"Abby, serial killers aren't known for telling the truth."

"He was!" She sighed and nodded to herself and he wanted to hold her again. "He was. You can't make up that kind of story. He was angry and jealous and he hated me. Would he have done that if he knew I was his daughter? You'd always love your own child. Always. Even if you hated the other parent. And he sounded like he... really cared for whoever it was and hated me because mom kept me and not her son. He wasn't trying to convince me. It wasn't some elaborate set of lies. Unless you think I'm lying?"

"No!" He knew full well that she wasn't and it would be his unwavering trust from that point onwards that would lead her to trust him again. "I believe you. I don't believe him."

"Do you trust my judgement?

"Yes, of course."

"He wasn't lying. I'm not his daughter and he knows that he has a son. Knew. I can't believe it's over." _Nor can I. My father is dead, everyone else is dead, no one suspects me and you and I are going to be together forever._

"Do you mind that I killed him? I know you wanted us to just arrest him and hand him over to law enforcement but I didn't think I could without the gun and – "

"No, I'm – Thank you, Henry. You saved my life." _Go on, now say "How can I ever thank you?"._

"Good. I thought you might be angry with me because – well, I thought he was your dad.""

The pizza arrived and Henry paid with cash from the back of one of his kitchen drawers. The transaction didn't last a minute but he noticed the pizza delivery boy look to Abby's beautiful form shifting up to sit on the sofa and felt like cutting the boy's eyes out. Inhaling the scent of pizza and breathing out deeply, he tried to calm down. The one thing he couldn't do for a long, long while was take a knife to someone.

"Hey. Here. Help yourself."

"Thank you. For everything," she smiled weakly at him from her position curled up at one end of the sofa. He laid the box down on the middle seat and went to search for another drink. Looking for more alcohol in woefully under-stocked cupboards, he found a bottle of expensive Italian liqueur that Ben Wellington had given him as an engagement present, with the note still attached.

"For Henry Dunn, my new cousin. Hopefully marrying into the Wellingtons will improve your taste in drinks. Love, Ben Wellington."

_Fucking hypocrite. Ben would have sucked the alcohol out of roll-on deodorant._

Suppressing a smile at how funny poor Ben's death had been and discarding the note on the counter-top, he brought the bottle back with plates for pizza and poured them both new drinks, which Abby promptly mixed with coke. She took a large swig as he sat at the other end of the sofa.

"You won't tell anyone, will you? I understand why you thought it was me and I understand why you told the police but I know I'm not the child Wakefield had. And you know that too now. So you won't tell people about the child, will you? Until the police find him? Promise me, Henry."

All he could do was agree. She smiled in obvious relief as she took the first slice and he smiled back at seeing her relatively happy for the first time in days. He was going to make her happy. He had cut away everything that upset her, confused her, took her away from him and, after some healing, would leave pure sweet Abby as his good half.

"You want to watch a movie? If you can't sleep, I mean. Wait for whatever this is to kick in a bit," he suggested. Continuing the "Wakefield's-child" conversation would lead nowhere good and he wanted to sit in peace with her as she associated her recovery with him.

She nodded and he rifled through a cupboard of DVDs. "A happy film, one where no one dies and no one gets hurt," Abby insisted and Henry immediately wrote off his thrillers and horror movies. "No weddings and no romance as the main story but everyone has to end up with the right people at the end and everyone has to be happy." He wrote off practically all of Trish's boring chick-flicks and, pointing out that this didn't leave much, invited Abby to choose. She pulled out an old favourite of Trish's and they ate quietly on the sofa as Abby let the movie wash over her and Henry tried to gauge how grief-stricken she was under the reserved exterior, without her noticing that he was far more focused on her than on the film. He made a mental note to throw out "Back To The Future" as soon as Abby wouldn't notice its absence.

She staggered off to bed just after eleven, slightly drunk and wishing aloud that she'd sleep as she stood in the doorway. The idea of no longer sharing the sofa with her, however platonically, was wretched pain and Henry craved the passing of the coming weeks. _They'll spiel away and everyone will forget about us. Then it'll just be me and Abby in the world together and she'll love me._

"Oh, Henry," she said, turning back to him. "Did you see a girl earlier? Sort of brown hair, might have been wet? She was in the ladies' and I couldn't figure out where I knew her from. I've just realised. She's the girl from the Globe. Harper's Globe. I got an article from her. You know, Robin Matthews."

_No one? No one? OK, for those of you who haven't watched Harper's Globe, the associated web series to Harper's Island, Robin Matthews was the protagonist of that show and survived the massacre. She left the island on a boat on the same Monday that John Wakefield died. I thought it only right to include her as having survived, given her connection to both Wakefield and Henry. Go and watch the show now. I think you can still watch it online. Don't worry - she's not integral to the plot and most of her story will be covered here_


	9. After every tempest come such calms pt 4

"_I'd never leave you alone like that."_

_She recognised the words to her left as the woods parted and they jogged up to the church. She turned her head, desperate to see his face. Jimmy's face, with his soft eyes and long hair that she wanted to run her fingers through and cuts that would fade in time. He'd come out with some scars but they'd just show him to be the hero he was for surviving. They'd make it now. The Coast Guard were coming._

"_I'd never leave you alone like that."_

_But as she lowered her eyes from his face to his chest, she could see a hole there. An exit wound from a bullet. Blood pouring out, turning his blue top brown as the red mixed in. And they weren't outside anymore. The woods and outside of the church had faded and she stood now inside the church, watching her love stare back at her, utterly oblivious to his injury. And then looking down and holding his right hand to the blood, bringing it back up covered in redness and meeting her eyes again with sorrow and horror. She couldn't speak as he opened his mouth again._

"_I'd never leave you alone like that."_

_But you did, Jimmy, you did._

_~~xx~~_

_She woke with a sickly sweet taste in her mouth, a raging beat in her head and limbs that felt twice as heavy as they'd been before._Urgh. I'm never drinking again. I wish I were dead._Moving her heavy eyes to take in her surroundings and recalling the events of the past week, she mentally took back the last statement. She'd nearly died and now she had a second chance. There was probably a moral in there about appreciating life but her fogged mind couldn't find it. Folding back duvet and sheets, she twisted around to look at the clock and saw a note taped to the front, over 11.27 in red digits._

"_Abby – I hope you slept well. It's nine in the morning and I'm going back to the police station. I'll pick up our suitcases and some food on my way back. I have to stop by at the office but I don't think it'll take that long. I'll be back at one at the latest. Please don't leave the house. There's a lot of media coverage if you turn on the TV or radio. Just make yourself completely at home until I get back. Henry. x"_

Media coverage? What's Henry seen? _She wrapped herself in Henry's black dressing gown and wandered unsteadily out to where he had spent the night._I can't believe I made him sleep on the couch. That's so like Henry. Not abandoning me whatever happens. I guess what Karen Dunn told him stuck. _At least he now understood that none of it was her fault, directly or otherwise. Well, the wound to his arm was a result of their brief mutual distrust but surely the first thing he'd do at the police station would be to insist to those in charge that he'd spoken to her and changed his mind about who John Wakefield's child was. Whatever Wakefield had meant about continuing to kill people – Shane and poor Nikki! – after her father's death, it wasn't that she was his daughter._

Do I really want to know what they're saying about me on TV? _She sighed and went to make coffee first. She knew her way around Henry's apartment well enough and she'd feel far more up to facing what would probably be a horribly detailed and insensitive report after a pint of water and a hot cup of coffee. Waiting for the coffee maker and hoping the water she was sipping would quieten the drums in the front of her head, she wondered what she'd be doing now if the wedding had gone to plan._Henry and Trish would have left for their honeymoon. And I'd be on my way back to L.A., back to my apartment and my job and my cat. Poor Henry. Poor, poor Henry. He probably doesn't have a clue what to do now. And what do I do now? I can't leave Seattle until the police finish their clear up. Great, I'm going to have to ask Kate to feed Lucky for another week or so.

But I would have come back for Jimmy. Jimmy. _Her dream came back to her and she held the glass tighter as the memories swam around her head. Water pricked at the backs of her eyes and, in spite of all the water she'd just drank, her throat grew dry._

Maybe I'll just go back to bed. _A vacuum cleaner started up above her and Abby grimaced, before remembering that it was nearly noon and Henry's upstairs neighbour had every right to clean house. Taking in the mess that he'd left in the kitchen and living room, she wondered if she should do the same._It'll make up for him putting me up. And I'll have a legitimate reason to put off turning on the TV. _Leaving her coffee to cool to a drinkable temperate, Abby went through the cupboards and eventually grabbed a bin bag from one. The soggy pizza box went straight in, as did the empty bottles of alcohol –_how much of that did I drink? _– and cans of mixer. Glancing into the kitchen bin to see if it was worth emptying, she spotted a note on top with Henry's name on it._

"_For Henry Dunn, my new cousin. Hopefully marrying into the Wellingtons will improve your taste in drinks. Love, Ben Wellington."_

Ben Wellington? Of course, Trish's cousin. What on earth happened to him? _She vaguely remembered overhearing Trish talking to her father on the boat about him not turning up but she'd hardly been paying any attention to minor wedding arrangements for the bride's side. The boat ride had been a giddy, sick experience of subconsciously knowing she shouldn't go back. The feeling in the pit of her stomach from the moment her plane had touched down to the moment she'd drunk a little too much on her first night there would have sent her running if not for her loyalty to the groom._ Maybe that was a warning from mom too. Right, and then Chloe mentioned Ben later. She was listing those who'd died or disappeared and everyone was blaming her for it. Didn't Henry say Ben was going to get a private boat over? So didn't he turn up? Shouldn't someone be looking for him in Seattle? Was he even in Seattle?

_A few minutes later, a bin bag full of miscellaneous rubbish was by the door and Abby sat facing a blank TV screen and gulping down coffee._What if I turn the screen on and everyone's blaming me because the police have told people that John Wakefield has a child? No, they wouldn't. They wouldn't say something like that until they'd found him. And Henry will have put them straight by now about dad being my real dad. There'll probably just be a bad and dated photo of me labelled "Abby Mills: Survivor" and tactless focus on the fact that the bastard took both my parents. I've got to calm down.

Oh god – does gran know yet?

_She swallowed the last mouthful of bitter coffee awkwardly and realised she'd have to be the one to phone her grandmother in California. Elizabeth Mills shouldn't have to hear the news of her son's death from anyone else. But the prospect of having to have that conversation was up there with turning on the television on her list of awful but necessary things to do._What do I say? "Hi gran. I've got some bad news. My best friend's wedding was attacked. Your son was murdered by the same man who killed your daughter-in-law. I nearly died. Otherwise, it was nice to see the island again. I'll be down to see you again soon."

OK, third option. Phone Kate.

"_Hello? Kate?"_

"_Hi!" came a man's voice over some loud background conversation. "Laney, is that you? You were supposed to be here an hour ago. You're going to miss all the food!"_

"_No, erm, this is Abigail Mills from upstairs. Is Kate there? Can you pass me over?"_

"_Hi Abby!" After a pause, her neighbour's voice came over the line. "My God, you should be here. Everything's so exciting. I've barely been sleeping, it's been so busy. It's hectic! How's your holiday, by the way? Seen your dad again?"_

"_Wha- Erm, you haven't seen the news have you?" Abby said, a little stunned. Despite not having looked at the coverage herself, she expected the whole country to be familiar with the massacre by now. Although her neighbour and casual friend was a little single-minded._

"_Yes, of course! Derek brought two portable TV sets round so we've got a different news feed going on each one..."_

"_No, Kate, there were murders. Haven't you heard anything about Harper's Island?"_

"_Err, no. What do you mean, murders? I thought you were going to a wedding?"_

"_Kate, have a look at the news. I don't want to go through it all again."_

_Abby rested her head against the wall as she heard the sound of typing down the phone. Aside from the vacuum cleaner upstairs, Henry's apartment was relatively quiet. There was little she wanted less than to be in the middle of a crowd right then. And the hangover didn't help things._

"_Oh. My. God. Christ, they're saying over two dozen dead. John Wakefield? Wasn't he the man who killed your mom? I thought you said he was dead. Are you OK? I mean, are you safe? Are you hurt?"_

"_I'm fine. I just need you to feed Lucky for a while longer. I have to stay in Seattle until the investigation is over. That's all I rang you for. Has she been OK without me there?"_

"_Yes, of course. Don't worry about anything. You need to, just, like, rest. Recover. Any idea when you'll be back in L.A.?"_

"_Maybe a week or two. I don't know. Thank you so much for looking after Lucky."_

"_Ring me again in a few days so I know you're OK. Speak later!"_

That was hard work. Still, her reaction wasn't "Are you really that freak's kid?" so the news can't be that bad.

_It genuinely wasn't too bad at first when she pulled up a news channel from Henry's extensive list. They rolled out all the clichés about the wedding, the murders seven years ago, the island's otherwise peaceful history, the islanders being unable to contact the mainland. Then the photographs came out. Seeing the list of "dead or missing" guests or locals finally brought it home to Abby as she sat on the couch and wondered how on earth her photo wasn't there too, and her father's face there, along with a few blunt comments about her mother, made her choke._I come back and a week later everyone's just a photo on a graphics display. The only one I have left is Henry and he can't be doing that well himself.

Well, I've got to get this over with.

"_Meredith speaking. How can I help?"_

"_Hello. My name's Abby Mills. I'm Elizabeth Mills' grand-daughter. I have some bad news for her. Has she heard about the murders on Harper's Island yet?"_

"_I don't think so. Everyone's just finished lunch. Has someone she knows died?"_

"_Her son. My father. I thought I'd have to be the one to tell her. Can you put her on the line?"_

_Abby had never heard her grandmother cry before. The story she gave was highly censored but nothing could change the facts. The man who killed her daughter-in-law and wrecked her son's happy marriage had come back to kill her only remaining child. Elizabeth Mills, at 76 years old, had outlived two sons and two daughters._

"_I'm OK though, gran. My friend Henry saved me. He killed John Wakefield defending me. He's a hero. You'll meet him. You remember me telling you about Henry, don't you gran?"_

"_Will there be a funeral?" Elizabeth Mills asked quietly. Abby desperately wished there was some way she could hug her down Henry's landline._

"_Yes, of course, gran. I'll arrange everything. I'll ring tomorrow or Thursday with details. Can you fly up and stay with us? I really need to see you but I can't leave Seattle. I love you."_

_After a long tearful coda of telling her grandmother how brave her son had been and how much she wished she could be back in California, she needed air. She walked through to Henry's study, flung open the window and booted up the computer._No one mentioned an accomplice on the news. The police said they didn't find anyone in the tunnels. Wakefield's son is probably as innocent as I am. Who's to say he even knows his parentage? Somewhere out is there is my brother and I'm going to find him.


	10. Because one did survive the wreck pt 1

Henry looked down at the body in front of him, the wound to its face neatly bandaged. He'd been looking forward to seeing Danny and what the police had reluctantly told him made the wait worthwhile. _A memo holder. Through the eye. And, according to the angle, he was impaled on it rather than the other way round. That's hilarious!_Even better was the recovery of a freshly buried corpse found by sniffer dogs, which confused and alarmed Henry at first before he knew the facts. He'd been relieved to know Booth's fate; after confirming with his father that neither of them had killed Joel Booth and being told by Sully and co that Booth had left to see his mother, Henry had worried incessantly that he might have seen something. _And the cause of that death? Bullet rupturing the femoral artery at a very downwards angle. A self-inflicted bullet wound. We spend so much time and effort on murdering about thirty people and one of them offs himself. Brilliant!_

Of course, he wasn't about to show this in front of Booth's mother and Danny's parents. Instead he was standing around, waiting for Shea to arrive so they could have look at his dead bride together. Henry hoped she'd still be wearing the dress. _Trish may not have got the wedding she went bridezilla for, but she'll go to her funeral in her designer dress._Until then he had to put up with his friends' weeping parents and feign some sorrow for their deaths. Oh how he would love to turn and laugh at Malcolm's parents, sitting on chairs in the corner and telling themselves that, as their son's body hadn't definitely been found, he might still be alive. How he'd love to burst their bubble of optimism. _Your son squealed like a girl when I stabbed him. Then I cut him into pieces and fed him to the furnace. See that skull over there? That's his. And that's all you're getting of him. That and his credit card bills._

The pathologists had been busy. Officer Hernandez had told him as he led Henry downstairs that several had come from across the state to get the work done as quickly as possible during the night. There was one body that only saw the cold white light of a small, more private viewing room for Henry to identify, but that had been over quickly and now he was getting a slideshow of his other results. _The only parent who understood the real me and yet he couldn't see Abby. Why was everyone so blind and obstructive?_Neither his fake brother or his fake uncle were out yet – he wasn't looking forward to seeing accidentally-dead JD – and the bodies of the other wedding guests would be shown as their relations arrived.

Henry jumped when he felt a heavy hand on his left shoulder and turned to see a tall blond man he recognised as Sully's father standing next to him. Henry's mind whirred as he tried to identify the emotion in the man's eyes and gave up without success.

"Did you – They said – You killed John Wakefield?" Mr. Sullivan asked through suppressed tears. Henry nodded and got a crushing bear hug in return. "Thank you. Thank you for killing him."

Henry tried not to giggle as the man stepped away apologising for the sudden contact and walked quickly back over to his wife and a couple of police. It was a difficulty he'd never experienced before. He'd seen relatives of his victims before, even deliberately meeting a couple after the fact once, but actually being thanked for killing the other murderer was new. As far as he could tell, all the deaths, aside from Booth's, were being attributed to John Wakefield; no one had privately discussed the possibility of an accomplice with him. With any luck, the mysterious string of killings that Charlie Mills had been investigating would be written off to Wakefield too.

_Time to face the music._

He recognised Robin Matthews from bumping into her yesterday: before then, he'd never actually seen her in the flesh. She was simply an online photo and private project of his father's. Henry had been absolutely livid when, mere weeks before the wedding, John Wakefield had staged a car crash for fun. OK, having seen the footage from the video camera later, the idea had been funny – _a bear trap!_– but it was the timing of the stunt that was the cause of the ensuring argument. That and the fact that one witness – a college girl – had gotten away. A college girl who might have seen her attacker's face and might connect the dots enough to be Charlie's credible witness before the wedding party had even assembled. Robin Matthews had to die and soon.

Henry wished he'd gone for the stalk-her-and-stab-her method of offing a witness. Instead, his father's research had turned up a ton of information on young Robin and, with too much optimism about beating long odds, Henry had agreed to lure her to the island and add her to the death count there. _She was supposed to be dead! Dad said he saw her dead! How can she be alive? And now she'll be able to tell the police that she didn't send those emails to Hometown Press and I'll have yet another hole to dig myself out of._ In about twelve hours, Oliver Melvin and Devon George had become vitally important to Henry's survival. He'd lain awake for a good hour last night after Abby had left wondering if the story would hold. In theory, everything should be fine. As he'd been planning to remain on the island with his beloved Abby, his side of the story would hold even without him there. Ollie and Devon would be his perfect witnesses. In practice, his own survival might change things.

Robin Matthews stood on the other side of the room, staring at the body of a white-haired middle-aged man that he recognised as editor-in-chief of the Globe. Henry wandered over for a closer look and hopefully a private chat with her before she raised too many suspicions with the police.

"My god, that's Sparky," Henry breathed softly behind her and Robin whirled around. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. That's Sparky Mackle. He's dead too?"

She nodded. "They're all dead because of me. Sparky. And Brent. And Cheshire Cat!"

"Erm, Cheshire…?"

"Andy Cullen. He helped me. And John Wakefield killed him. I thought he was targeting me! Filming me and stalking me but he was just trying to help. I'd be dead if he hadn't."

_Damn, I remember Andy. Weird kid. Father died in the 2001 murders, strung up with Kate Seaver and my whore of a mother._

"He left me videos and messages. He told me where his boat was hidden and I managed to get it back to Seattle. It took hours. I thought I'd die. I thought Wakefield would see me and know I wasn't really dead and come after me."

"He's not coming after you now. He's dead. I killed him. Wait, he thought you were dead?"

"You killed him?" He nodded grimly and she answered the question. "He left a noose at the Harper's Globe offices. I hooked a belt through the loops of my jeans and tied it to the rope so it looked like I'd hanged myself but I hadn't. He came in and looked at me and spoke to the camera and then he left."

_Fuck me._

"You faked your own death," Henry said in genuine disbelief. "Why didn't we think of that?"

_Why didn't my father think of that? How many mistakes can one man make? First he lets the annoying fisherman live, then he blabs to Abby about having a son, then he doesn't bother to even check Robin Matthews is dead. Then what? Did he leave a framed copy of my birth certificate in the tunnels?_

"They said you survived too. And you killed him? What happened?"

"I – I had a knife. He came at us. I got lucky. I got his heart. He only got one stab at me before he died," he explained, rolling back his sleeve to show her the bandage. She winced appropriately and Henry had no doubt he could win her trust.

"They said you were part of the wedding party," she said, indicating the police man and woman currently talking to rich-looking couple that Henry didn't recognise and were probably the parents of one of Trish's idiot friends.

"I was the groom. My bride is dead," he stated simply and he saw pity in her eyes. He hoped he wouldn't be on the receiving end of another hug.

"We met one of the guests in Seattle the night before. Me and Brent. We went on a date. A proper date. You know Ben Wellington? It turns out he knew Brent from college. They started drinking and – and," she stopped to choke back tears. "And I left. I never saw Brent alive again."

_They started drinking and you left and Ben got totally wrecked and told Brent that he was meeting me early in the morning for breakfast. He also told Brent that he didn't trust me and my winning smile an inch and didn't want me to marry his cousin. That's why Ben had to die so quickly. Sadly for your boyfriend, that also meant that Brent couldn't be allowed to speak to you at all between the morning he went back to Harper's Island and when my father happily dumped his body in the swimming pool for you to find. Sorry about that._

"I'm sorry," he lied, patting her on the shoulder.

"Thanks. I – I don't even know who you are. I'm Robin Matthews. You're…"

"Henry Dunn. I think I'm your employer. Harper's Globe, right?"

"Yes!" she looked at him, visibly confused. "But – why me? Why did you hire me? Cheshire Cat said John Wakefield lured me there. Why did you hire me?"

"I think a friend of yours contacted us recommending you recently, saying you'd dropped out of college. Ashley Wease, I think her name was. Someone at the office got your résumé from Washington Pacific and contacted you. Didn't he tell you all this in the email?" Henry explained. _This story has got to hold. I can't change it now. This is the story Ollie and Devon will corroborate._

"Ashley? But Ashley's dead. She was my friend and she died a month ago, before I dropped out. How could she email you? And I didn't get an email from Hometown Press. I only got a letter," Robin protested, looking even more puzzled.

"You got the letter?"

"Yes, I've got a copy at home in Wisconsin and a copy in my luggage. I'm not sure where that is though."

"The letter would have been a follow-up to the emails someone sent you and your acceptance of the position."

"There weren't any emails!"

"Miss Matthews – can I call you Robin? – I've spent the last few weeks preparing for my wedding. I haven't been in the office much. I really don't know the details. But I can speak to the regional manager about the circumstances of your employment. And someone called Ashley Wease did email us just before I took some time off. I can show you the emails."

"That couldn't have been Ashley," Robin insisted correctly. She paused and looked away from him for a second, then turned back with eyes full of tears. "Ashley died in a car crash early this month. John Wakefield was there. He rigged the whole thing. He killed Ashley."

She left the room in a hurry and he dashed after the girl, bumping into her as she returned downstairs. In the corner of his sight, he saw Shea arriving with Madison in tow, both dressed in black for mourning. But he really had to get Robin sorted first.

"Robin, I'm going to my office after this. Do you want to come with me? With any luck we can get this all sorted."

"Henry!" Shea called as she half-walked, half-ran over. She looked like she hadn't slept a minute last night, her eyes red and blurry and her hair loose. He was vaguely impressed she'd managed to pull out some decent mourning clothes. Perhaps they had come from their hotel room via one of the many Wellington properties in the area.

They walked through together, with Shea handing Madison over to some of the other adults so she didn't see her dead aunt, grandfather or step-grandmother. The atmosphere didn't seem to bother the kid a bit and Henry watched her launch into an animated discussion with a dozen adults around her. _Well, this is awkward. Shea and I were never that close. She was eight and a half years older than her little sister. And she's going to get all weepy now and I'll have to keep pretending I give a damn about my fake bride. The funerals are going to be awful._

He did manage to produce a few tears for Trish's delightful corpse. Whoever had seen to her body had done a good job – he could barely tell that a burning church had collapsed in on her. Shea stroked her hair and face and whispered to her sister and Henry had to stop himself rolling his eyes. _She can't hear you. She's dead. That's a corpse you're talking to._Thomas Wellington had received a second autopsy but, for obvious reasons, he wasn't shown this time either. Henry stood a little way back, mentally congratulating himself on the head spade idea. _Dramatic at the time and destructive enough to deny his daughters a last look._It had definitely been worth killing Reverend Fain for. As Shea cried for her dead suspicious father, lying under a sheet, Henry looked down at Katherine Wellington. Marrying a rich older man and a mere nine days older than her eldest step-daughter, no one had ever taken Katherine seriously. Not even Henry until he'd come back from the tunnels with the annoying tag-along fisherman, desperate to rescue Abby from his father, and she's taken him to one side to ask why he'd been moving trolleys around in the kitchen earlier. Surely Beth had been taken around that time? Had he seen anything? Anyone? Henry had had to resort to one of his emergency sedatives to shut her up before she blabbed. Stabbing her was probably his riskiest move of the whole week.

As Shea looked at the step-mother who'd been screwing her husband and prepared to see said philandering husband and Madison drew a bigger crowd with whatever gruesome story she was relating, he was beckoned over. _Time for JD._As the sheet was drawn back from his fake brother's face, Henry felt an odd twinge of something. _Regret? Guilt? Indigestion?_The tears on his cheeks were real this time. _You didn't have to die in the end, JD. Not until you tried to summon the cavalry. You didn't even know I was adopted. But I had to invite you because I had to invite Uncle Marty, the man who did know I was adopted and never thought to tell me. Fine, he didn't know whose son I was but he should have told me nonetheless. Liar. And he had to die quickly too._Henry had even considered arranging the deaths of Marty and JD to occur before the wedding but wrote the idea off: Trish would only have postponed the nuptials to allow him time to grieve and he'd waited long enough. So, although no one else knew, the Dunn line had ended with the two bodies lying in front of him.

Eventually he made his excuses and called a taxi to the office, insisting that a confused Robin come with him and promising Shea that he'd be in contact.


	11. Because one did survive the wreck pt 2

_Leaving the computer to load up, Abby fixed a quick breakfast for herself and sat at Henry's desk wondering where to start. _Who would know if a boy existed who was the child of Sarah Mills and John Wakefield? No, Sarah Lawson she would have been. Well, if he exists, which I know he does, he must have some sort of birth record. My mother lived in Washington all her life so the boy must have been registered here. _Within a few minutes, Abby pulled up the website of the state government from a search engine and looked over the page. Following the links through, she found social services and then adoption services. At first glance, it seemed to be catered for prospective adoptive parents with information on tax breaks and private adoption agencies. _

My mother put a child in the system? And left him there? But why? Even if she was running away from John Wakefield, wouldn't she have tried to take the boy back after she married dad and John Wakefield was in prison? She didn't even tell dad. He was so horrified when I even suggested it. I don't understand any of this.

_She was initially delighted to find what seemed to be a search engine for adoption records, but what turned out to be a complicated guide to find an adopted person. After reading through the legalities, Abby sighed and rested her head in her hands as she realised how little she knew about her fabled half-brother. Finding an address and other contact information for a relative whose name and whose adoptive parents' names she knew would be easy enough, provided the boy had been adopted through the state; otherwise she could go down a list of private agencies. Getting his name would require an official court order and his consent to be found. _

Damn it! Well, it was never going to be that easy. And it's not like I'm in a hurry. Maybe if I turn up at the office in Olympia and explain what's going on, they can tell me what's the best thing to do. Henry can drive me down there sometime.

_It was out of sheer curiosity that she looked up the name of the girl she'd met at the police station and whose name had produced such a startled reaction from Henry. She remembered wondering why but, realising she'd had a little too much to drink and needed sleep, then deciding to ask him in the morning why he'd clearly recognised the name Robin Matthews._

_Search terms "Robin Matthews" and "Harper's Island" produced a tonne of news articles, all published within the last 24 hours. Abby resisted the temptation to pull up the website of her own paper and instead opted for the more local Seattle Times. At first, the volume of coverage on the girl seemed ridiculous. Somehow there was far more information on Robin than there was on any individual wedding guest or local. _Has she done an interview already? Was she about to do that when I saw her in the bathroom yesterday afternoon? That was – what? – nearly six o'clock? Maybe._ A proper read-through soon explained it: she'd produced a video diary from September 10th up until yesterday and the paper had gleaned vast amounts from that. Stills from the videos jumped out at her with their captions below: a cheery-looking photo of a familiar white-haired man labelled "Sparky Mackle, editor of Harper's Globe, died Saturday September 27__th__ 2008, murdered by John Wakefield"; a smiling handsome young man labelled "Brent Cyr, medical student and boyfriend of Robin Matthews, died Saturday September 27__th__ 2008, murdered by John Wakefield"; a blurry picture of dead woman labelled "As-yet-unknown woman, died Saturday September 27__th__ 2008, murdered by John Wakefield"; and finally a pale shy-looking man labelled "Andrew Cullen, island deliveries and owner of the boat Robin Matthews used to escape the island, died Friday September 26__th__ 2008, murdered by John Wakefield". Abby felt sick beyond what she could blame on the hangover. _I knew these people!_ And then one more photo that sent her stumbling towards Henry's bathroom to throw up her breakfast: a video still of John Wakefield looking straight through the camera at her with hard eyes, severe expression and indifferent air of victory, considering that the article said he'd just seen Robin Matthews' faked hanging behind him and believed her dead._

_Groping around Henry's bathroom cabinet for a spare toothbrush, she wondered how one man could cause so much destruction and, more incredibly, how on earth her mother could have loved him. The image of John Wakefield glaring at the camera was the perfect one to show the world. It showed a man whose only emotions were anger and hatred. The only other emotion she'd seen on his face was shock after being stabbed by Henry._

_Five minutes later she was back at the PC, reading several different accounts of Robin' s story. At least her connection to Henry was cleared up: she had been hired by his company. At first it seemed odd but, after reading about how Henry had bought the rights to the Globe, she decided it was quite sweet. _That's exactly the type of thing Henry would do. And now he'll think of Harper's Island with the same horror as I do. _The stories were similar on all sites and, finally heading for the L.A. Times, Abby looked in shock at the comment next to her own name._

"_Abby Mills, one of our reporters and who will shortly be granting us an exclusive interview."_

What? _A look at the by-line just confused her more. _Why is Mina on news? She's a feature writer like me.

_Her cell phone being God-knows-where, Abby ended up ring the her boss on Henry's landline._

"_Nick? Nick Adelaide? This is Abby Mills."_

"_Abby Mills. Thank you so much for getting in contact this quickly," her editor answered warmly. "Mina Randall says she's being leave messages on your cell since yesterday evening, as soon as we'd heard you were OK. Don't worry – we don't expect you back anytime soon after what you've been through. Take the week off. Take the month off. Christ, are you OK?"_

"_Yes, yes. Umm, I don't have my cell phone with me. I think it's at the police station," Abby said, glancing back at the screen. "I read what's on the website – I need to speak to Mina. She's said I'm giving her an interview and I haven't even been in contact with her."_

"_Well, you don't have to do it now. The interview, that is."_

"_Nick, I nearly got murdered. Several times. I'm not up for pouring my heart out to anyone right now. Let alone a major newspaper," she insisted at the idea._

"_Abby – you're a great writer, you work for us, you were right on the scene – you can't imagine what a coup this is! To not go through the fuss of finding and interviewing witnesses and working out what they say is true and what's made up, especially if there are lawyers circling. I can just pay Mina's round airfare and I know you'll give a complete and honest account of the murders to her when she arrives!"_

"_Nick, I'm not sure – " _

"_Abby, come on. You've had ten days off in the run-up to the biggest journalistic event in four years. Give a little something back."_

_Abby sighed. She'd known this would happen. "OK. Fine. When's Mina flying up?"_

"_When's convenient? I'll put you through to her now."_

Damn. Why did I agree to this? Still, Mina's nice and I don't have to tell her everything. If the papers want a sordid account of just the murders, I can do that. It's probably better to tell someone I know rather than some hack who's going for the most sensational headline.

"_Abby, sweetie," Mina's cooing voice appeared on the line. "I was so worried. You're the talk of the office here. I hope you don't mind what I wrote about you. Nick was on at me, saying we had an advantage and I should use it. You haven't been answering your phone."_

"_I don't know where it is. I think it's at the police station," she explained._

"_Ahh… that explains it. Well, I'm about to book a hotel from the second so we'll get your story down then. How does that sound?" Mina asked gently._

"_There are going to be funerals. Umm… I don't know when they're going to be exactly. I'd like to wait until afterwards. Maybe the middle of next week?"_

"_So sometime between the seventh and the eleventh? That's fine. I can change the dates and in the interim we'll print more about that Matthews girl and tell everyone you're too traumatised by your experience to give us an interview yet."_

_Abby could practically hear Mina smiling over the phone as she gave her Henry's home number and cell, in case her own was damaged, and promised to call with a date she could do. Mina in return promised a long and highly complementary series of articles before hanging up._

Xxx

_Henry appeared in the doorway at two o'clock, struggling with bags and suitcases. She ran to help and watched him smile as hooked her large carry-all off his shoulder and onto hers. _

"_Sorry I'm so late back. I had things to sort out at work and then I realised I'd forgotten our luggage and had to go back to pick it up. Did you sleep OK?"_

_She shook her head as she rifled through her suitcase for a set of clean clothes. Bumming around the apartment in a dressing gown all day just made her feel dirty and lazy while her best friend did everything. She wanted out. She wanted to run in the mornings, not nurse a hangover._

"_What have you been doing?"_

_Throwing her clothes over one arm so she had a hand free, Abby walked into Henry's study and came back with a piece of paper, which she held it to his face as evidence._

"_I found that."_

"_Olympia?"_

"_Yes. I was hoping you could drive me. It's quite a long way but it might be fun if we both go. And there's no hurry. We can go in a few weeks if you're busy."_

"_No, anything's fine," he answered, looking bewildered. "Why the address? What's in Olympia?"_

"_Records. State records. I'm going to track down my brother. Want to help me?"_


	12. Because one did survive the wreck pt 3

It was a relief to get away from all those people, crying and demanding that he be upset too. Henry sighed as he sat down in the cab. It was hardly quiet outside but, after he gave the address, no one was talking to him and, if he closed his eyes, he couldn't watch Robin's awkward fidgeting next to him. _It could be worse_, Henry told himself._ In terms of what she saw on the island, Robin has to be the least knowledgeable witness in the world. And as her experience was solely to do with my father, it'll make him look even more capable of doing the main rampage alone. Or would it make him look too busy to do it without help?_

It was watching her leaning her head forward and trying to push back the wavy hair that kept falling over her ears that it kicked in again. _Kill her. Kill her. Do it now, before she has the chance to tell any more people about you. Let the driver set you down and drive away, walk her down the wrong roads, pull her into an alley and strangle her. Do it. She can't live. She's too dangerous. You have to protect yourself. Kill her._

Henry gripped his hands tightly in his lap as the rational part of his brain went into autopilot.

_No, that's stupid. I'd never get away with it. How many people know Robin left the police station with me? Shea. Madison. Any other person there who was watching me. The surveillance cameras. And the taxi driver would say he dropped us off together and everyone at work would say she never came in. And I'm not home free yet. The cops or FBI might keep us under surveillance for weeks just in case. There's no way I could kill Robin now and look innocent for Abby. _

_I need Abby. This can't take long. I need to be around Abby._

"Thanks for sending the lawyer yesterday. I didn't really need one but thanks anyway. The man I spoke to said I shouldn't speak to the police without someone there."

"Huh?"

"I rang the office last night. The number on the letter you sent me. It was quite late but there was a young man who sounded really panicky and a bit tired and said he'd sent me a lawyer as soon as he could. Thanks. I'm not in any trouble, but thanks."

"Oh." _Well, that makes sense._

For a few seconds he was utterly confused when, as he led the young woman into the office, every pair of eyes in the vicinity fell on him and stayed there. He'd never seen so many people wearing completely black clothing here before and being the focus of people he'd hoped he'd never have to see again wasn't pleasant. At least recognising the looks was easier this time – pity. _Oh great, I was expecting everyone to still be on an eleven-day weekend and they've all come in this morning to catch up on work._ He had to disentangle himself from a forceful hug from the woman on the front desk, who seemed far too upset about the murders of a bunch of people she'd never met, and made for his office. The desire to dump Robin with Devon and co and get back to his Abby was overwhelming and the giant bouquet of dark-purple flowers someone had left on his desk didn't help his discomfort.

A few minutes later, he stood at the back of the office while Robin read through the messages on the screen and tried to tune out the inane chatter. As soon as he'd told Devon who Robin was and that she was a fellow survivor, she'd broken into long worried apologies and assumed responsibility for her immediately, much to Henry's relief. He couldn't see Robin's face as she looked a series of emails she hadn't written or received and felt like laughing._ I fooled everyone. If Robin doesn't follow up, any blame will stick to Devon for sending the letter and Ollie for a lack of research. If she does, all paths lead back to John Wakefield._ He fiddled with a petal and remembered what he'd forgotten: their luggage.

"I didn't… I didn't send these," Robin turned to look at him, her face white and scared.

"Then who did?" He asked the obvious question. "That's your name in the address."

"Yes, but that's not my email. Someone's pretending to be me."

"Robin, you replied to the letter. I just assumed that you knew why we'd hired you," Devon answered.

"I didn't. I just had to get away from Pullman. I'd dropped out of college. I needed a fresh start."

As the conversation went round and round in circles, neither woman getting anywhere, Henry focused on all the horrible things that came so close to happening and cringed. Abby believing Kelly. Abby catching him killing JD, or JD choosing to tell the whole truth. Charlie Mills guessing who his wife's child was when Abby spoke to him in his final few minutes. His father guessing that he would never harm Abby. Someone in the wedding party or a local having the nerve to kill John Wakefield. That wretched fisherman living. Abby guessing the truth. By the time Devon turned to him, the desired effect had kicked in: he was pale, teary and trembling slightly.

"Go home. I'll take care of things. Come back whenever you're up to it."

~~xx~~

He felt like dancing but it was impossible while carrying half-a-dozen pieces of luggage. Although Abby's practicality couldn't be denied, her two bags and one suitcase were awkward. He was too happy to be irritated though. After tipping the cabbie generously for helping with his suitcases, he broke into a wide grin and leaned his head against the door. It was the first time since leaving the apartment that morning that he'd been alone and able to show what he really felt. _And now I'm coming home after a hard morning to my wonderful wife-to-be. I have to do this every day. I'll never let her leave._

Even after he'd composed himself and entered, the sight of Abby, still in his shorts, t-shirt and dressing gown, rushing to him to help made the smile emerge again. She'd always been all-too-willing to help him, attendance at his wedding aside and he could just about understand the reason for that, but all-too-oblivious that all the help he needed was her presence and her love.

"Sorry I'm so late back. I had things to sort out at work and then I realised I'd forgotten our luggage and had to go back to pick it up. Did you sleep OK?"

The question he really wanted to ask was "Do you like sleeping in my bed?" and was slightly concerned when she shook her head. _She's safe now. Why isn't she comfortable?_ She said nothing as she laid her suitcase flat, zipped it open and pulled out jeans, two tops and a cardigan, underwear and a bag of toiletries. If they were still on Harper's Island, he'd have taken away the clothes he didn't like but he had no such power here. He'd have to put aside some storage space for her, but that was entirely natural for a couple living together and the idea of his 'n' hers sections of his bedroom was delightful. Although it seemed otherwise to all the world, he was a bachelor no longer.

"What have you been doing?"

Instead of answering, she disappeared into his study. This wasn't a concern. She was making herself at home, like he'd asked, and there was no Room Full of Insanity for her to find. To his confusion, she came back with a note on which she'd written an address in Olympia. "I found that."

"Olympia?"

"Yes. I was hoping you could drive me. It's quite a long way but it might be fun if we both go. And there's no hurry. We can go in a few weeks if you're busy," she replied, which made even less sense. Still, it meant that she planned to stay here for a while and he'd agree to anything that allowed him to spend that time with her.

"No, anything's fine. Why the address? What's in Olympia?"

"Records. State records. I'm going to track down my brother. Want to help me?"

_WHAT? _All coherent thoughts vanished from his head and, opening his mouth, he had no idea what to say. "Wha- What?"

"I'm not going to do it now or anything. I just – " she stopped and threw her arms around him, the clothes over her arm falling to the floor. He hugged her closely, breathing in the musky scent of her hair and hoping he'd misheard her previous sentence. "I know that everything's gone and we're all over the news and I can't get it out of my head and I need to do something to distract myself. I know we've both lost so much but I've gained something out of this. I have a brother!"

"But…?" He wasn't entirely how they'd gotten here.

"If the police didn't find him on the island, which they didn't because they would have told us, he must be somewhere else. And I don't know where and I don't even know his name but mom never mentioned living out of state before she met dad. So he'll have a birth certificate here."

_No! No no no no no! This is not happening. How did this happen? Has Abby lost her mind? Why the hell does she want a – _

"I know I can't just wander in and ask to look through a stack of birth certificates," she continued, unaware of whatever expression might be on his face. "But I think that's the best place to start. I need to get dressed. I'll be five minutes."

He must have spend that time in a daze. Needing to do something with his hands, he started opening the cases and mindlessly made piles of clothes on the sofa. He'd pack everything away once Abby had finished dressing in his bedroom. His mind wandered over to her and he wondered if she'd notice if he never washed those shorts and t-shirt again. He wanted to walk in and feel her naked skin against his own. Before the fantasy got too graphic, he stopped and laughed bitterly to himself. _I want to love her and the only word on her mind is – _

_Why? Why? WHY? Why did she have to find out? Why does she have to be curious? Why? Fuck fuck fuck. Why did Cole Harkin have to have that fucking diary? Why did my father have to boast to her? Why did he have to confirm that I exist and that I'm alive? Fuck. And now she's looking. She wants to find him. To find me. Only she doesn't want a lover; she wants a – _

_But she'll never find me. I've covered my tracks too well. My father didn't know my name until we met so there can't be anything concrete in the diary, except for a rough estimate of my date of birth, give or take a few months. If they even find the diary. What did my father said he'd done with it? If Sarah the Whore had anything on me, surely her husband would have found it._

_She's supposed to be traumatised! She's supposed to not want anything to do with John Wakefield!_

"Hey," Abby's soft voice came from behind him and he jumped. "Did they say anything at the station? If they found anyone on the island?"

Henry shook his head, trying to look neutral but fighting back horror. He would have liked to lie, to fight her efforts but had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't supposed to know anything and had no proper reason to try and talk her out of the idea. "No, it was the same as yesterday. There's nothing to say Wakefield had an accomplice."

She shuddered at the mention of his father's name. "Then I'll find him."

"But why? Why would you want anything to do with Wakefield's kid?"

"Henry… He's still my brother. For twenty-five years I've thought I was an only child. It's all right for you. You've always had a brother. You've got JD!" She stopped suddenly and, mistaking the look on his face for grief, hugged him. "Oh Henry, I'm sorry. Poor JD."

_Don't use that word, Abby. That's a horrible word. I never want hear it on your lips again. I'm not – I'm your friend. I'm your soulmate. I'm your other half. I'm going to be your lover and your husband. I'm nothing else. You don't ever have to know._

"And why not? Not straight away. I know that there are going to be funerals and – But after that, why shouldn't I find him?" she insisted after breaking away.

"I can only see three options," he started, collecting his rehearsed ideas into what hopefully sounded like a spur-of-the-moment analysis. "Either he doesn't know and we're about to tell him his real father is a dead serial killer and I doubt he's gonna take that well. Or he does know and he's a psycho like his father and kills us both."

"What's the third option?"

"He doesn't exist."

"Henry…" and in that expression was the stubbornness and resilience he loved.


	13. Before the truth has got its boots on p1

_She couldn't believe how quickly Shea had managed to arrange the funerals. She had expected Henry to leave her with the other mourners as she wasn't connected to the Wellington family, but to his credit he hadn't forgotten her. He had barely left her side over the past two days, helping her with the arrangements for her father's funeral and her grandmother's stay, cooking for her and ensuring she knew everything that was happening, and comforting her when she woke up twice in the early hours of Wednesday morning, screaming because John Wakefield and his trail of murderous havoc were very much alive in her mind. While the police funeral was tomorrow, back on the island, for now she was still in Seattle, sitting in the back of a black car next to Henry and opposite Shea and Madison in complete silence._

_While Madison glanced curiously around the car, frequently meeting Abby's eyes, and kicked at the seat, Shea beside her looked terrible. Even with make-up on, Abby could see the dark smudges under her eyes and the raw redness of her nose. She suspected she could see tears in Shea's eyes too. Henry had spent the previous two days pretending he wasn't crying but she wasn't fooled. She'd never seen Henry look quite so antsy and lost. Still, she had made a point of being there in the hope that he wasn't suddenly feeling too alone. She'd offered to listen if he wanted to talk about Trish, but he'd refused gently. She understood. Half the time she wanted to bawl and pour her heart out about Jimmy and the other half she had no idea how she'd phrase her words so it wouldn't aggravate Henry's own wound. _

_As they got out at the church, Madison looked intently at her again before taking her mother's hand and walking away. Henry left her to follow the Allens, making it clear his reluctance to do so, and to her immense relief a few of the parents of Trish's friends came over to speak to her. There was no pleasant small-talk she could make but at least she didn't look so alone, looking at Beth's parents and thinking _"Your daughter was abducted by John Wakefield, dragged alone through underground tunnels and cut in half." _She wondered if they even knew how their eldest daughter had died. Beth's younger sister and a young man had walked away just before the Barringtons had joined the Daramours , the Carters and the Vandeusens, who had just arrived in the country that day to mourn their son. _

_The funeral was as cheerless as she'd expected. There were four closed caskets at the front, although only Thomas Wellington needed one, with framed photographs and arrangements of flowers on display. Abby watched as Madison laid a small bouquet of white flowers on the coffin of her step-grandmother, the last of the mourners to go up. She sat towards the back of the church and tried not to mind the frequent curious glances she received from everyone else. _They recognise me. They've never met me before but they recognise the photos of me in the press. _It reminded her of the way the taxi driver had reacted just as he dropped her off at Seattle harbour when he recognised her. Only the looks were slightly different in a way she couldn't put her finger on. She looked for Henry, sitting half a dozen rows in front with obvious tears on his cheeks, wanting some dependable company and comfort before remembering that it was she who should be comforting him. What did a few odd looks compare to losing your fiancée?_

_~~xx~~_

_Henry stuck to her side diligently afterwards. It should have been obvious that he was in no condition to discuss the murders or answer questions but a lot of the guests were mourning their own family or friends and they were tackled with a lot of gentle questions about the last days or moments of people's lives. She took charge there, fending them all off with tales of courage and contentment. Her tale of Chloe and Cal's last moments got more brave and poignant every time she told it. She noticed a few who were clearly avoiding her though. A young man talking to the Daramours had flat-out ignored her earlier when she tried to talk to him and she suspected that several were wondering how she'd survived and their loved ones hadn't. She didn't know either._

_It was only later when most everyone had left that Shea approached them, looking apologetic for what she was about to bring up._

"_I spoke to the police this morning. They're going to close the investigation," she told Henry._

"_I'm glad," Henry said stiltedly. "I thought it would all be over when we were rescued."_

_Abby said nothing. For the past half hour, Henry might have been shouting "I want out!" for the way she could read him. While Shea was hardly ignoring her, she seemed only to be talking to Henry. Madison trotted up a few seconds later, wearing a smart black dress that she suspected was bought for the occasion and holding someone's funeral invite. She smiled mischievously at Abby. _

"_But it's not over!" Shea insisted. "They didn't find the man in the tunnels."_

"_Shea, there was no man in the tunnels. The police searched," she said. _Henry's right. The sooner the police and the press leave us alone, the better. You can't grieve in public. I couldn't do it for mom on the island seven years ago.

"_There was! Madison heard someone. Didn't you?" Shea maintained before turning to her daughter, who was busy folding the card into pieces. "Didn't you, Madison?"_

"_Uh huh."_

"_See?"_

"_Shea, there was a lot going on. Madison was scared, confused, lonely. The police didn't even find traces of a second man living down there. Is it too much to think she was imagining things that weren't there?" Abby suggested gently._

"_Abby – " _

"_Shea, she's right. We'd be chasing ghosts," Henry said._

"_I can't believe you're taking her side!" Shea snapped and Abby had to remember that it was only the stress and grief talking instead of Shea really being angry at them both. "If my daughter says she heard footsteps, there were footsteps! And the police aren't going to forget it!"_

_Seeing a guest turn to look at her raised voice and turning red, Shea walked away, leaving Henry with a peculiar look on his face. _He must realise what I do: that Madison probably made it up for attention and is now sticking to her story out of panic. And Shea either has too much faith in her daughter or is too embarrassed to admit it.

_~~xx~~_

_Abby ran her fingers through her hair to tidy it and checked her make-up in the mirror in the ladies' bathroom. She'd put the bare minimum on, barely caring what she looked like until Henry had inadvertently pointed out that she might be photographed. The sleeves of her black cardigan were slightly damp after the cold tap exploded on her when she washed her hands and Abby wondered if anyone would notice if she wore the same black outfit to every funeral for the next week._

"_Hello Abby!"_

_She hadn't even noticed that Madison had followed her in until the girl came out of the end cubicle. Abby tried to smile._

"_Hello Madison."_

"_Thank you for coming to our funeral. Mommy said you might not come."_

"_Oh." She was confused and wondered how to phrase the obvious question for a nine year old. Madison interrupted her thoughts before she got anywhere._

"_When's your dad's funeral?"_

"_Tomorrow. There's going to be a big police funeral for him on the island. He was Sheriff for over twenty years so it's going to be a big event. He's going to be buried with my mom."_

_Madison and Shea would be there, of course. It went without saying that all four would attend the funeral of every one of Wakefield's victims. Her grandmother would be arriving the next morning and they'd stay at her father's house, which technically now belonged to Abby. Nothing was down on paper yet but she'd had a phone call from the lawyer who drew up her father's will: she inherited everything. She didn't want to stay there but the Candlewick was even less appealing and Elizabeth Mills would need someone comfortable to sleep Friday and Saturday nights. As soon as she'd mentioned her reluctance to stay there, Henry had volunteered to tidy it up. They both knew he meant that he'd remove everything to do with John Wakefield. So he was leaving for the island this evening and she was spending her first night alone in his apartment._

"_Not the Sheriff. John Wakefield."_

Why would I know what happens to Wakefield? Why would I care? Wait –

"_Madison, John Wakefield isn't my father," she insisted, feeling alarmed and sick at the idea._

"_Yes he is. Mommy says the diary said so."_

"_No! Madison, the diary was talking about someone else. He didn't say it was me. He was talking about a son."_

"_Huh?"_

"_He had a son. My mother had a son when she was younger. Before she met my dad. The child Wakefield wrote about is my brother," she tried to explain. The girl merely looked curious, as if she had no idea of the enormity of what she was saying, and Abby wondered why on earth Shea had told her daughter that. _Surely Shea realises it's not me? Henry's told her, surely?

"_You have a brother? Is he nice? What's his name?"_

"_I don't know. I don't know anything about him."_

"_Then how do you know you have a brother?"_

"_Do you remember when John Wakefield asked to speak to me? And I did. He told me that it wasn't me he wrote about in the diary. He told me he had a son and that he found him."_

"_Oh. That's not what mommy says."_

"_What does mommy say?" Abby asked the girl carefully. It was the second time she'd mentioned her mother's version of events._

"_She says that John Wakefield is your real father but I'm not allowed to tell anyone and I'm not allowed to talk about it in front of other people. Because it would upset you," Madison explained as Abby's stomach curled up in horror. "She says that you were an accident."_

_Before either of them could say anything else, the door opened and Shea marched in. Abby nearly burst out in anger at the woman before remembering that she'd just buried her father, step-mother, sister and husband. There would be better times and places to discuss it. With a brief worried look at Abby, Shea took Madison's hand and led her out. Abby followed a little way behind in silence._

_Henry was waiting for her by the outside doors. He put an arm around her shoulder as they walked to their car. Once they were inside and away from everyone else, she began to cry. It had occurred to her that he was really her only friend left._


	14. Before the truth has got its boots on p2

He awoke sharply at seven, turning the alarm off then lying comfortably on his back and staring at the ceiling. He breathed deeply._ So this is the ceiling I would have had?_ Abby and the grandmother he was so looking forward to meeting wouldn't be here until ten but he had things to do before they arrived. He'd speak to the reverend who'd been drafted for the occasion to check everything for Charlie Mills' funeral was still running smoothly as soon as he could and that would leave him plenty of time to iron out any more of Abby's problems. While derailing the sheriff's funeral would be funny, ensuring it went well would win him her thanks. Her sudden and temporary absence from his life was jarring; although he hated having to pretend to mourn, he secretly loved the way Abby would check on him. _It means she cares. It means she loves me. It means that, once the funerals are over, the press move on and Shea and her bratty daughter stop talking about the tunnels and leave us alone, everything's going to be perfect. I just have to get through this. _He hadn't wanted to leave her yesterday. She'd cried on the way home from the Wellington funerals, real tears to match his fake ones, and to his annoyance wouldn't tell him why. She'd only said it wasn't the right time and that she'd tell him later. He'd wanted to cuddle her and whisper in her ear that everything would be all right until "later" arrived.

He sighed and got up, putting yet another set of black clothes on. Very aware of his deadlines, he ate a breakfast of coffee and the sheriff's favourite cereal, then went back upstairs to strip the bedding and replace it with a fresh set in from the linen cupboard. Now was the wrong time for Abby to ask him why he'd slept in her old bed. He didn't have a good answer.

~~xx~~

He was waiting as the ferry arrived and Abby stepped off, a carry-all in each hand, followed by a old woman who bore a strong resemblance to her son. He rushed forward to greet his love, remembering with irony what he'd thought twelve days ago as he'd greeted her then: _Abby's here now and we'll never be apart again._ Abby did a similar double-take as she spotted him on the docks.

She set the luggage down as he came up to her and hugged him, with her breathing uneven in his ear. She let him go after what felt like an oddly long time but not nearly long enough and, as he looked into her face, he saw her eyes shining and her lips in a weak smile. He went straight for the luggage and, with her hands free, Abby introduced him as her "best friend" to Elizabeth Mills. He smiled, told her how pleased he was that she could make it and offered his sympathies. _By the time you fly home to California, you're going to like me and approve of me for Abby._

"So you're the man who saved my granddaughter's life?" she asked and, even as he nodded and tried to be modest about his achievement, he could see the appraisement in her eyes and guessed it was a positive one. _This might be easier than I thought. Still, she looks the type to think men and women can't just be friends. Maybe I should mention how rich I am._

They were quiet on the short walk to the Mills' house. He wanted to ask Abby about yesterday and reassure her that there was no trace of John Wakefield left in the attic but that would have to wait for when they had some privacy. Until then he could simply bask in her presence, feeling all the odd little bits and pieces in the world fall into place as they should be. The house was immaculate when they arrived. Elizabeth Mills would take the spare bedroom, Abby would sleep in her old room and he'd be back on the couch for the night they were there. Turning the entire house upside down and then putting everything back had taken him the evening and long into the night. It hadn't surprised him much, going through Sarah Mills' papers, that there was nothing about him. He already knew that she hadn't loved him.

~~xx~~

The funeral of Charlie Mills made him nervous, he had to admit. It wasn't that Abby was distraught. It wasn't that he came face to face with Sarah's grave. It wasn't any kind of affection for a man who would have been his step-father. It was mainly the fact that the funeral for one sheriff and three deputy was full of cops. He wasn't like his father. He didn't get kicks out of sending taunting postcards to the police. He was a careful man, outwardly kind and considerate and mild-mannered, but being surrounded by cops made him feel like a common criminal.

The other funerals that day weren't much better. He was gratified to find out that there was simply one big funeral service for the others, instead of the many he'd factored in. After all, the locals wouldn't want to sit through more than half a dozen services back to back. So the reverend spoke about and the locals cried over Kelly Seaver, Nikki Bolton, Andrew Cullen, Brent Cyr, Shane Pierce, Maggie Krell and Sparky Mackle. And Jimmy Mance.

It would have been very unfair to murder Mr. and Mrs. Mance solely because of their son's actions but standing still and being forced to make conversation with the pair was making Henry's fingers itch.

"You were there, weren't you? You were the last of his friends to see him alive," Tina Mance said between sobs.

Henry nodded and wished he could stop being surrounded by crying people. He'd spent the last few minutes glancing around the room to keep track of Abby and find an excuse, any excuse, to leave the Mances. And failing.

"What really happened? I know – We know what the police said. But you were there," Steven Mance trailed off, leaving Henry to fill in the gaps. _Go away! Go back to wherever you left Harper's Island for! Stop reminding Abby of him!_

"We were in the church. We'd just found Trish. My fiancée Trish. She was there on the altar. And John Wakefield came out of nowhere. Jimmy was so brave. He fought Wakefield so Abby could run for the helicopter. He saved her life. Wakefield shot him. I'm so sorry." _I'm not sorry in the slightest. But let's not examine this scene too closely. Especially the bit where I drop the gun for no good reason._

"It was over instantly, wasn't it? It would have been quick? He wouldn't have suffered?" Mr. Mance said, trying to convince himself. Henry nodded and noticed the relief in their expressions. Over their shoulders, he spotted Robin talking to Shea and pointing at him from the other side of the room.

"He didn't suffer. He died a hero. You should be so proud of him." _A shot in the back. Oh, he suffered. I hope death was a relief. If only I'd had time to boast to him. He should have known that he failed utterly at protecting Abby. He should never have gone near her._

"Hey," Abby said, appearing beside him, her voice still sweet despite the occasion. "Tina. Steven."

He could only watch as Jimmy's mother gave Abby a hug and start yet another conversation about how wonderful their son had been and he took this as his cue to leave. Between then and going back to Abby's house was one long fantasy involving the Mances, a car, duct tape, gasoline and matches. _He's dead. The fisherman is dead. Why am I so jealous of a dead man? _

~~xx~~

Immediately after her grandmother had gone upstairs to retire for the night, Abby left the living room and returned from the kitchen with an open bottle of white wine and two flutes. Henry smiled as she set one on the table in front of him and poured him a generous amount. It had been a long afternoon of meeting strangers, offering and receiving sympathy and being forced to share Abby with several dozen mourners; this was the first free time they'd had alone. She sat down on the couch next to him and poured herself a equally full glass.

"I know they're for champagne but it's a special occasion," she explained. She smiled fondly. _She's so beautiful when she smiles. She shouldn't cry. She should never cry again. Why are we mourning these wretched people? They weren't Abby's friends. They were debris. _ "We hardly ever used these."

"Nor did we," he replied, drinking.

"Dad either had beer or drank whiskey out of tumblers and Mom used normal wine glasses. She used to keep the expensive glassware locked in the cabinet over there," Abby said, indicating. "She always said I'd break it."

He laughed softly. He'd listened to Abby talk about her mother dozens of times in the past seven years and it had gotten easier over time. Not that he was exactly comfortable with Abby's idolatry of her. _It's just garden-variety jealousy. And it's not Abby's fault her mother was a whore. Abby's not like that. And after all, it's something I'll have to get used to if I'm going to live with her for the rest of my life._ "Did she have a point? Did you break it?"

"No! Well, I – It was Nikki's fault! We had these really wide glasses and she built a pyramid and tried to pour wine all the way down. I got the blame of course," she said, before he watched the smile fade from her face and she knocked back the entire glass in one. "Nikki… They're all dead because of me."

"Abby, that's not true," he said forcefully.

"It's what they all think. No one's saying it but they all know Wakefield came back because of me."

"If Wakefield was telling the truth about – what he told you, then it couldn't have been about you. It doesn't make any sense. Wouldn't it make much more sense if he was targeting your father?" he insisted. Abby nodded as if she wasn't convinced but didn't want to argue the point.

"It was a good funeral this morning. Your dad was a hero," he continued as Abby refilled their flutes. Abby raised hers.

"To Charlie Mills."

"To Charlie Mills."

They both drank deeply. Abby put the bottle to one side, making her too-much-alcohol-in-a-too-short-space-of-time face. He loved that face and considered kissing it.

"How's your grandma holding up?" he asked instead.

"Not great. Can't be expected to, really. Dad was her last child."

"I thought he was an only child."

"Nope. One of four. He had a brother and two sisters."

"You've never mentioned aunts or uncles."

"They died before I was born."

"I'm sorry."

"I never knew them and gran doesn't talk about them. Don't be sorry."

There was a pause as she looked lost in her mind. He changed the subject.

"Everything from the attic's all packed up in boxes. Well, all the Wakefield stuff. I wasn't sure what you wanted to do with it. I'm not sure there's much point in giving it to the police. I think we can safely say the copycat murders in Seattle were Wakefield himself," he suggested. There wasn't anything in there pointing to him but he didn't want to take the chance. "There's a lot of your mom's stuff already in boxes."

"All that work and he still beat my dad," Abby said flatly.

"And I beat him. John Wakefield will be remembered as a psycho and a murderer. You dad will be remembered as a hero."

Abby looked contemplative. "He did do some… bad things."

"Covering up the fact that Wakefield was alive doesn't count."

"That's not what I meant. I – No. Ignore me. I'm talking rubbish," she said, getting up hastily and picking up the flutes and wine bottle. "I should go bed. You'll be all right on the couch again?"

"Yeah," he sighed as she disappeared into the kitchen and he felt the light in his heart follow her away. Then to his surprise, she came back with a determined look on her face.

"Was there anything about my brother in the attic?"

"Not that I could see. Your dad didn't know about Wakefield's kid. Unless he's the Seattle murderer, but that's got to be Wakefield himself, surely?"

"We should take it with us. I'll need to look through it all. You don't mind me keeping all my stuff at yours, do you?"

Henry shook his head. "Stay at mine as long as you need."


	15. Before the truth has got its boots on p3

"_Ready?" came Henry's voice from the living room. Abby took another look at herself in the mirror, picked her handbag up off the bed and clambered over the pile of boxes between the bed and the door._I've got to move all this stuff. There's just nowhere to put my clothes and things and all mom's stuff too. Honestly, it looks like I've moved in. Henry'll start wanting his bed back soon. I just have to go through it all. _He smiled when he saw her and waved the invite. "Don't worry. We've got plenty of time."_

_She leaned against the wall as he put the card down on a side table by the front door and drained a cup of coffee, before walking to the kitchen to rinse it and leave it by the sink. In the week or so she'd been staying there, Henry's impeccable neatness had amused her and she wondered if he was doing it for her sake. She didn't mind. While she was hardly a slob, it simply didn't occur to her to clean everything as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. She picked up the card and read it again. The words hadn't changed._

"_Dear Henry Dunn,_

"_You are invited to attend the funeral of Lucy Daramour at Washington Memorial Park & Mortuary, 16445 International Road, SeaTac, WA 98188 on Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 2pm."_

_It had puzzled both of them that both Mr. and Mrs. Daramour and Ryan Bennett had forgotten to include Abby's name on the invite. While she'd still never had a conversation with Lucy's boyfriend Ryan, the Daramours had been perfectly polite to her. They knew who she was. Henry had shrugged it off as forgetfulness. She would have been perfectly happy not to go though. If she was being honest, she'd admit that she'd hated every funeral. They only reminded her of her mother's one seven years ago and no one except Henry made her feel welcome. She'd taken to sticking to him like glue during them, the horribly strained polite conversations, deliberately not mentioning John Wakefield or any individual mode of death, being a little easier to stand if the group was bigger. Yes, the Seattle police had heaped praise upon her father last weekend to her and to her grandmother and Jimmy's parents had been so kind and forgiving of her for leaving their son back in 2001, but her gran was home in California now. Every other guest seemed to be talking about her behind her back. She'd never felt so uncomfortable._

_The intercom buzzed and Abby told the cab driver they'd be down in a minute. She felt a hand on her arm and together they headed out for the dozenth time. It wouldn't be one where he'd hold her and cry into her hair, like he'd done at Sully's and JD's. Lucy had been Trish's friend. Her family barely knew Henry and she was sure that they'd never heard of Abby Mills before the wedding. But they'd stand at the back and show their support._

_After a brief detour for her to buy a bunch of flowers, they arrived at the service at same time as about eight other people. Abby grasped the flowers to her chest as she stepped out and gazed around the park. It seemed far too immaculate, too perfectly styled for the benefit of a woman who couldn't see it, although from what she'd seen of Lucy in life, it would have suited her._

_Everything happened in slow motion._

_As she exchanged a few words with a passing young woman who worked there about where she should lay her flowers and Henry paid the cab driver and asked for him to pick them up afterwards, she heard one of the guests call worriedly up the path: "Ryan, what's wrong?"_

_Abby automatically looked for the source of the voice – a older woman she didn't know – and then scanned the area for Ryan. She spotted him a good forty feet away, neatly dressed in an expensive-looking dark suit, but striding over and making a beeline for her. He was one of the few people she'd never spoken to and, as she met his eyes, it occurred to her that she'd never looked into his face before either. If she hadn't seen the genuine article, she'd have described his expression as murderous._

Did I do something? Is it my dress? The flowers? It didn't say anything about flowers on the invite. He can't be angry about them, surely? You're supposed to bring flowers to funerals. There's nothing I could have said to upset him or the Daramours. I liked Lucy well enough. He can't hate me for living when his girlfriend didn't – he invited Henry, Shea and Madison and I've seen him talk casually to them. Why should he be angry at me?

_She looked over her shoulder, reckoning it was possible that he was after someone else behind her. But there was no one there. Henry was behind her and to her left, out of Ryan's eye-line, and everyone else seemed to be edging further and further away from her. She turned her head back to meet his eyes as he approached._

"_Get. Out."_

_She stood there in dumb incomprehension as he came up to her face._

"_Get out!" he hissed, leaning into her, his eyes burning with a hatred she couldn't understand._What have I done?

"_Hello, Ryan," she managed to get out as she held the bouquet in front of her like a shield. "I brought flowers."_

_He wrenched them out of her hands and threw them in a puddle, ribbons and all. Although her eyes never left Ryan's, she heard faint gasps followed by a loud silence, painfully blatant against the previous hum of chattering. Involuntarily, she stepped backwards._

"_Get out! How dare you come here! We didn't invite you. How dare you come to my Lucy's funeral!"_

_He wasn't shouting – his voice was barely about the volume of normal conversation – but she could tell everyone was listening. She heard footsteps behind her and turned her head fractionally to see Henry. She stepped backwards again so they were level. Ryan's eyes never flickered._

"_Why do think we'd want you here? Why do you think anyone would want you at their funerals? I don't care how much the others pity you. You know how I found out? I'm told that my girlfriend has been burnt to death by a psychopath, I go to see her at the morgue and that traumatised child – a nine-year-old girl – tells me that he was doing it to get to his long-lost daughter. You!" he finished, lifting his hands and jabbing the air in front of her face with his index fingers. "So how dare you turn up here to gloat!"_

What? He thinks – But I'm not! What – Why is he saying this? _"Wha – What?"_

"_Get out!" he demanded again, placing his hands on her shoulders and shoving her at the same time as she was taking another step backwards anyway._

_She stood there, paralysed and silent, her mind blank and horror-filled, as Ryan's eyes flicked to the left and the hatred was momentarily replaced by fear. Henry's hands grasped his wrists before Ryan had time to lower his arms and slowly and deliberately pushed him a few steps backwards. She couldn't seem to turn her head to see Henry's face but she knew his tempers well enough. She considered herself lucky not to be on the receiving end of any of them._

"_Why is she here? Why did you bring her? It's her fault everyone's dead! It's her fault your fiancée and your family and your friends are dead. It's her fault my Lucy's dead. And that bitch should pay for it!"_

_Henry punched him._

_As she heard loud gasps from the crowd around them, she looked up from where a confused Ryan was sitting on the path to three men in suits walking quickly towards them._We're going to get thrown out._She staggered backwards, stepping in another puddle, before realising that the eyes were following her rather than staying on the men._

They're all looking at me. I'm the attraction here. Not Ryan. Not Henry. They're all looking at me. And they were looking at me before. Before Ryan said anything. They knew. All of them. They were shocked when he took my flowers and they were shocked when Henry hit him but they weren't when he accused me. But I'm not Wakefield's daughter. He's wrong. He's wrong. He's wrong! They all thought that. They thought that before. The morgue? They heard at the morgue? But that was a week and a half ago. That was before the other funerals.

They knew at the other funerals.

They knew. That's why they were looking at me weirdly. That's why some of them wouldn't talk to me. That's why I thought they were talking about me. They were. They all think it's my fault. They all think John Wakefield is my father and that he was targeting me. They blame me? Of course they do.

I can't go in there. I can't see them now. They won't believe me if I tell the truth. Anyone would deny it. They'd think I was lying. How can I look anyone here in the eye? They're all looking at me.

_She fled._

_~~xx~~_

_She ignored Henry's shouts of "Abby! Stop! Wait for me!" as she ran. It took less than a minute for him to catch her up but she made it quite far in that time. Having run out along the road and spotted a little café at the end of it, she sprinted for it, running madly but she didn't care what she looked like._It's not like anyone's opinion of me can get any lower.

_He caught her arm and swung her round. She leaned her head into his chest as she calmed down enough to speak._

"_I can't go back. I can't. I'm sorry. Henry, I'm sorry. I had to leave. I couldn't stay there," she panted. "You can go back if you like. There's a café down there. I'll wait there."_

_She was so relieved when he shook his head. "I won't leave you. Hey, come on."_

_He led her, still trembling, to the near-deserted café, telling the girl behind the counter that she was in shock. He sat her down at a table in the corner and Abby kicked her wet shoes off, lifted her legs up and hugged them. Henry didn't care if he could see up her dress._

"_I had no idea that was going to happen. I swear," he told her, placing a glass of coke in front of her. "Abby, are you OK?"_

"_They all know. They've all known since before Trish's funeral. That's why they've been so cold to me. I couldn't understand it. I didn't think. I didn't twig," she mumbled, reaching for the glass and sipping her drink. "Madison told them. At the morgue, he said. Did you know?"_

_Henry shook his head vigorously. "I had no idea. I knew Shea thought that Wakefield was – but she hasn't brought it up since and no one else has mentioned it to me. I guess she told Madison."_

"_That's what Madison told me. At Trish's funeral. She asked me when my dad's funeral was and I told her and she said no, when was John Wakefield's? That's why I was so upset afterwards. I'm sorry. I should have told you."_

"_No. This isn't your fault. I'll speak to Shea."_

"_Bit late for that. Madison's told everyone and everyone's told everyone else. They wouldn't believe me if I tried to tell them the truth," she insisted, then laughed bitterly at the truth of the last statement. "They all hate me!"_

"_No, they don't."_

"_Yes, they do! Ryan hates me. Everyone hates me," she maintained._

"_I like you."_

_She gave him a look."Henry, I can't do this. I'm sorry. I have to leave."_

"_OK, I'll call us a cab. Take us home."_

"_No," she stopped him. "I'm going back to L.A. – I can't stay in Seattle."_

"_No!" he almost shouted. She spilled the rest of the coke down the front of her dress in surprise. "You can't leave!"_

_Looking up from her dress in shock, she met Henry's dark eyes, fixed on hers from across the table with a wild look in them. He was panting and she put the empty glass down on the table._Is that panic? Why? Is he that desperate for me to stay? _He looked as scared as she felt and, for the second time that afternoon, she wondered what she'd done wrong without realising it._

"_I can't stay," she pleaded._

"_But – You – But – Why do you want to go?"_

"_You saw how they looked at me!"_

"_Abby, you'll never see any of these people ever again! They don't matter! I know it's horrible," he said, leaning in and taking her hands. "But it's over now. You can't run away over one thing. Look how it worked before after the first murders! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that."_

"_It's OK," she replied automatically. She didn't want to admit that he was right: running away from Harper's Island hadn't helped at all. But all she wanted to do was curl up and pretend nothing had ever happened and that would be so much easier back home. There no one cared who her parents were._

"_Abby, I – I need you here. I know it looks like I'm doing fine but I'm not. I'm only getting up in the mornings because you're here. If I wasn't cooking for both of us, I probably wouldn't eat," he said, looking like he was about to cry. "Don't leave me. You're the last friend I have."_

Oh God, I'm being so selfish. Henry needs me. He's looked after me so much and now he needs me to look after him and I'm running away. What kind of friend am I? _She thought back to Ryan's harsh words, Madison's curious questions and the accusing eyes of people she barely knew but who thought they knew her._But how can I face anyone? Or is Henry right? I won't see any of them again, surely? Maybe Shea and Madison but Henry can talk to them. They'll believe him.

_She dithered, torn on what to say._

"_And what about the Olympia trip?" Henry threw out._

_She nodded slowly, unsure of her words until they formed. "OK. I'll stay. You'll speak to Shea and it'll get better, right?"_

_He beamed and nodded. "Thanks."_

"_Olympia on Monday? I'm meeting a friend tomorrow and the office'll be closed at the weekend I think," she suggested, getting ready to leave._

"_What friend?" he asked sharply, standing and fishing in a pocket for money for the drink._

"_Oh, someone from work. Mina. I agreed to do an interview for the paper. I'm not sure how they talked me into it. But she's nice. I think they just want an exclusive. I'm spending all day at a hotel."_

"_Home?"_

"_Home."_


	16. Shutting the stable door part 1

The back of the taxi, with Abby sitting beside him and staring out of the opposite window as they drove back to his apartment, wasn't the ideal place to reflect but it would do. Henry could have kicked himself.

_You punched a man in the face! And for what? Believing the rumour that you started?_

_He touched Abby. He shouted at her and he attacked her. No one touches Abby but me._

_Well done. What happened to mild-mannered Henry? What happened to looking innocent? Why don't you just wear a sign saying "I have a secret violent side"? Now people are going to reconsider. They're going to think "Wait, how do we know Henry Dunn wasn't the accomplice?" and some of them might ask the police. You're smarter than this._

_The investigation's closed. The police have better things to do. And Shea already knows I have a temper. She's known me long enough and they all think I'm stressed and grieving. Just because I have a temper doesn't automatically make me capable of cold-blooded near-perfectly-planned murder. Well, it does in my case but that's not the point. I'll just have to call Shea and apologise to Ryan. Bastard._

Being polite was a sad inevitability. As they drove, he constructed a much more satisfying future for Ryan Bennett. The man didn't deserve apologies. An appropriate treatment would be cutting off the hands that touched Abby's shoulders, forcing him to eat the flowers and finally making him apologise to Abby before he bled to death. More blood to honour Abby.

He looked over at Abby and she turned her head to meet his eyes. The death fantasy faded slightly as it stood up to Abby's gaze. _I will control it. I will have Abby around me all the time and I won't want to kill anyone anymore now they're not in our way. Abby will cure me. Maybe I'll invite Ryan to our wedding._

The thoughts of their wedding turned to thoughts of locations, which in turn turned to thoughts of Los Angeles. _Abby said she wanted to go home. Abby threatened to leave me. How the hell did the Wakefield's-daughter rumour get around so much? Those people shouldn't care. Abby's nothing to do with them. Why is it that the only way I can explain John Wakefield having a child is backfiring so badly?_

~~xx~~

He waved the bags of groceries as he let himself in. Abby was sitting on the couch with her back to him, holding a sheaf of papers.

"What took you?" she asked. He grinned internally as he imagined her asking the same thing in ten years' time. She'd made herself at home so quickly. It was a shame that he'd have to sell the apartment and buy another for the sake of starting over.

"Just browsing," he shrugged it off. He'd expected the phone call to take ages and it had, with him hanging around the public phone box outside the grocery store and worrying that someone was watching. But the situation had been desperate and he now had a mental list of things he needed for tomorrow. "I need to call Shea about today. When do you want dinner? I was thinking lasagne. What are you doing?"

Abby turned around and knelt on the cushions to face him. The stained dress had been discarded and she was looking a lot more comfortable and Abby-like in jeans and a top. She wasn't in monochrome black anymore and now put her laundry through mixed with his, a new habit that made him deliriously happy for reasons he couldn't quite pinpoint. It was a feeling he'd only ever known around Abby. "These arrived in the post. I legally own dad's house. I should sell it, shouldn't I? But I don't want to go back."

"Would you want to live there again?" _Because I'll take that for us to live on Harper's Island. It wouldn't be isolation but it would still be our home. _Abby shook her head.

"It's too full of memories."

"Then wait. With us in the news at the moment, you won't be able to give it away."

She left the room with his bags as he reached for the phone, planning a conversation that would have to seem right from both Shea's side and from anything Abby overheard. He could have throttled Shea for letting her weird daughter bad-mouth Abby to a load of strangers. Now he just wanted to cut them out of his life altogether. Waiting to guarantee she'd have left the funeral and was able to talk, he'd decided his best method would be to fully defend Abby and try to foster some resentment between the women. After all, Shea couldn't tell Abby that he was the one who started the rumour if the pair weren't on speaking terms.

"Hello?"

"Shea, it's Henry."

"Henry. Listen, what happened earlier? I got to the service to find that apparently you'd gotten into a fight with Ryan Bennett. You weren't there and the poor man was really shaken up. What happened?" she asked, the confusion and disapproval apparent in her voice. Clearly no one had wanted to talk about it.

"He attacked Abby," he explained, glancing around to see if she was listening in. He couldn't see his love anywhere but the apartment was open enough for her to overhear him anywhere. "I found him shouting abuse at her and pushing her around. Of course I was going to defend her."

"I know Ryan Bennett. That doesn't sound like him at all! Unless – Wait, what was he saying about Abby? Is this about Wakefield?"

"Yeah. He said she only there because she wanted to gloat and she had to be the one to pay for what Wakefield did," he explained quietly.

"Oh. Henry, no one's really happy. I know she's done nothing wrong but how is everyone else supposed to see her? However innocent she is, she'll still the daughter of the man who killed their loved ones. You understand. They can't blame Wakefield so they'll blame her. And it is a little insensitive for her to turn up when they're mourning," Shea said, obviously trying to be delicate. Henry was torn between laughing at how wrong she was and worrying how quickly Abby could recover when people kept reminding her about the murders.

"She's not," he said. "She says she isn't Wakefield's daughter."

He heard Shea sigh. "Madison told me she was denying it. What did she tell you?"

"That, when she spoke to Wakefield in the jail, he said he had a son born before Abby was."

"That's what Madison said."

"She seems pretty convinced."

"And you believe her? It's exactly what she would say if he'd told her that she was his daughter."

"Shea, she's my friend. I trust her," he said loudly and adamantly, hoping Abby overheard. He lowered his voice. "But I don't trust Wakefield's word for a minute. I wouldn't put it past him to lie to Abby's face. Abby insists he was telling the truth but this is psycho we're talking about."

"So there's no real proof either way?"

"No," he sighed. He wasn't going to mention Abby's new and ill-advised quest to find him. He didn't need Shea enquiring into their progress. "But Abby was a wreck earlier today. I know we're probably not going to see most of the people at the funerals ever again but would you at least tell them there's some doubt. For Abby's sake. Do you have a number for Ryan? I need to apologise."

After scribbling the digits down on a scrap of paper and promising Shea that he'd call him later, he feigned concern. "How are you holding up, Shea?"

"Not well. There's just so much to deal with. There's still no word on Ben. They didn't find him on the island but I haven't been able to get in contact. I'm going to send Madison away. She can't deal with the press. Did you meet my brother-in-law and his wife last week? He's been offered a eighteen-month transfer to Ireland with his work and he's taking it. I've asked if they'll take Madison with them. I want her away from all this."

They hung up with the usual words of support and comfort. Henry was still sorry he hadn't managed to kill the irritatingly concerned woman but with any luck she'd disappear from their lives and he wouldn't have to risk been caught killing her.

~~xx~~

His phone alarm on the living room table went off on Friday morning and Henry groaned. Sleeping on his side on the couch was starting to get uncomfortable and he couldn't even go out during the long restless hours in case Abby woke up and found him gone. No killing and no dropping the façade.

But it was life with Abby. She was the first person he'd see every morning and the last at night. They'd cook together, eat together, go out together. Chores were divided up between them and Abby gave him enough personal space that the transition from living alone to with her was easy. After all, he'd planned to live with her forever. It was their moments apart that felt misplaced. And she was there. Close enough to touch. And he could touch her, even if it was only the platonic friendly way he'd done before: hugging her, laying his hand on her shoulder in comfort, and such. He should have been frustrated by the painful blend of proximity and denial but it didn't matter. She was there and he was stable.

He wandered through to the kitchen, placing last night's wine glass next to the sink for washing with the breakfast things, and made a pot of coffee before walking back to the pile of fresh clothes he'd left on a chair the night before. He'd found himself wishing she'd interrupt him when he was changing clothes, to the point where he never bothered to find out whether she was asleep or awake in the mornings.

Now dressed and holding a cup of coffee in one hand and pushing the bedroom door open softly with the other, he stood still, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. A streak of sunlight lit up the flecks of dust in the air and illuminated a small patch on the bedcovers. Henry's eyes slowly followed the covers upwards, over the unmistakable shape of Abby's legs and body, probably clad in nothing more than a t-shirt and panties. He finally laid eyes on her face, obscured by her arms and her wild hair, which seemed to cover the entire pillow. After putting the cup down on the bedside table next to his alarm clock and Abby's own empty wine glass, he knelt down beside her and gently pushed her hair back. Her eyes were clustered with sleep and he stared at the residue of tears on her cheeks. _She's been crying. No. She shouldn't cry. This is Ryan. This is Shea. This is what they've done to her. Abby, my beautiful Abby, no one's going to make you cry. And you don't need to hide it from me. _He backed off, noting the tissues in one closed fist and the screwed up tissues she'd dumped on the floor alongside all the cardboard boxes. The other hand had her necklace wrapped around it, lifted to her lips as if she was kissing it.

"Abby," he whispered. "Wake up. I brought you coffee."

She mumbled, blinking rapidly as she looked up at him and then smiling blearily. "Hey…"

"You've got two hours until you need to leave. I'll get the car out and give you a lift to the hotel."

~~xx~~

They finally headed out at half past ten. Abby hadn't mentioned how upset she must have been the night before and hadn't brought up the subject of Ryan again, instead telling him about a colleague, Mina, and her agreement with work. She'd give Mina enough information to turn into a series of articles and her boss would expect her back, fully emotionally healed, in the new year. It gave Henry a definite deadline: he had no intention of letting Abby go back to Los Angeles, let alone go back to work.

"I was thinking," Abby reflected aloud next to him as he drove. "Do you think I should tell Mina about my brother? If he knows that I'm looking for him, he might come forward."

"No," he cut her off short. The panic was back in the pit of his stomach and he gritted his teeth as he tried not to show his alarm. Abby's now-regular references to a mysterious "brother" were getting easier to deal with; Henry was managing to think of him as a different person entirely, but that idea would only hold if Abby never put the two together.

"Why not? It'll save us a lot of time."

"You'll probably terrify him."

"By letting him know his sister wants to find him?"

"By telling the world that John Wakefield has a son. If he knows that Wakefield is his father and you manage to get the press and everyone else interesting in tracking him down… What's he going to do? He'll probably leave the state, run away. If he's in Washington at all," he insisted. Setting a curious public on his tail was the worst thing Abby could do. Thankfully, she seemed to accept the point.

After Abby excited pointed out the hotel and the grinning blonde woman waiting outside, he dropped her off on the sidewalk. He watched Mina greet Abby with a deep hug and irritatingly shallow girly kisses on both cheeks and wanted to slap the smile off the stupid woman's face. Instead he smiled back and waved in his best goofy fashion, hopefully cementing a good first impression with a friend of Abby's, and drove off, heading for Interstate 5.

~~xx~~

The journey took forty-five minutes but every minute counted. He had to be back before Abby was and he had no idea how long Mina would keep her. But he knew where he was going, had the documentation he needed and wasn't going to leave unsatisfied. After getting directions around the building by a distracted young woman at the front desk, who was far too absorbed in a book to take much notice of him, he ended up in the right office.

"Can I help you?" asked an expectant woman.

"Hello," he sighed in relief. "My name is Henry Dunn. I'd like to seal my records."

_And here goes all my plausible deniability._


	17. Shutting the stable door part 2

_She didn't want to to talk about last night. It wasn't that Henry wouldn't listen or that Henry didn't know already what she'd been upset over. She was just embarrassed. _I've made a teary idiot of myself so much over the past few weeks. Is Shea acting like this? Is Henry? No. And I'm supposed to be playing the supportive friend for him right now. _He didn't need to hear a long-winded story about how awful it felt to lose your parents – Henry knew that well enough – and he wouldn't understand what it had felt like the previous day to be the target of so many people's scorn. At least the people who'd tried to throw her out of the Candlewick had had the excuse of being terrified for their lives. Ryan Bennett was just a normal man living a relatively normal life and he hated her._

_She was surprised though that Henry wanted to keep the whole "Wakefield's son" thing out of the papers. It had struck her as such a simple idea that morning while chatting with Henry about not being as newsworthy as Mina thought she'd be. Enlisting another friend's help in reaching out to her half-brother seemed perfect. Mina would be happy to help. But, as she sat in the passenger's seat next to Henry, she saw his point. _

"_You'll probably terrify him."_

"_By letting him know his sister wants to find him?" she argued, wondering why Henry seemed so reluctant to track the man down at all. She'd guessed at first that he hated a man he'd never met simply because John Wakefield was the man's father, but that made no sense. Henry had accepted her when he'd believed she was Wakefield's daughter._

"_By telling the world that John Wakefield has a son. If he knows that Wakefield is his father and you manage to get the press and everyone else interesting in tracking him down… What's he going to do? He'll probably leave the state, run away. If he's in Washington at all."_

_He had a point. He didn't need to spell out what it was like to be thought of as the child of a serial killer. She'd briefly wanted to run away yesterday under the eyes of maybe two dozen people. Her brother – he'd become "Lawson" in her head after her mother's maiden name, even though he could have picked up any surname – would be the focus of millions. A second point hit her a few minutes later as she walked into the hotel lobby: telling the public that John Wakefield had a child at all might loop the attention back to her. That finalised her decision._

"_Abby! Sweetie!" Mina exclaimed as they embraced on the sidewalk, before placing kisses on both her cheeks. The familiarity her friend assumed with her was a little discomforting but that was just Mina. She had enough energy to drag a human interest story out of anyone. After waving Henry off home, Mina took her arm and led her inside._

"_I've got us these delightful little fruit cocktails inside. Bit pricey but I'll put it on expenses. Tell Nick I had to lay it on thick for you. We can have lunch here later too if you want to stay," she said with a wink. Abby immediately felt uncomfortable. Dishonesty wasn't something that came naturally. But sitting down and knowing that she was experiencing something way out of her price range was oddly fun. _This is how Trish and her friends used to live… and how the wedding should have gone.

"_That was Henry Dunn, wasn't it?" Mina asked and she nodded. "He seems chirpy for someone who went through that ordeal. You said you were living with him?"_

"_Yes," Abby breathed. "Henry's been wonderful. He's been so lovely to me, looking after me. I don't know what I'd do without him."_

"_He's quite your saviour, isn't he?," she said, her smile as wide as her face. "It's down to the two of you and John Wakefield's about to kill you and Henry Dunn swoops in and saves you. You watched him kill John Wakefield, didn't you?"_

"_He was so brave. I'd be dead if it wasn't for him." Making Henry look good was really the least she could do. And it was the truth. "He saved me twice. Wakefield could have killed me after – a-after he killed my dad. Henry stopped him then too."_

"_Henry the hero. Ooh, could we get another two of these please?" Mina turned to ask a passing waiter and handed him their empty glasses. _

"_Ah, can I just get fruit juice please?"_

"_Sweetie, I insist."_

"_No, I'll get an orange juice please." _

_Drinking was becoming a nagging worry. She winced every time she tried to work out how many units of alcohol were in the wine she drank in the evenings before bed. But it helped her sleep. Lying awake in bored silence only brought on the memories. Last night, reliving Ryan's words was the worst of it and she'd held her mother's necklace to her face in the childish idea that she could protect her from the world until the wine kicked in. But, regardless of that, drinking during the day was out of the question._

"_Ooh, Abby, guess who's getting a divorce," Mina changed the subject to office gossip as the drinks arrived. _

"_Bernard?" Abby guessed when it became apparent she had to suggest a name._

"_Nick!"_

"_What?"_

"_I know. He's ditching that little gold-digging whore. Turns out she was screwing a lot of boys her own age on the side. And I heard she brought a couple of diseases back too. Didn't I say at the time that there's only one reason a girl like that marries a rich man twice her age? God, I hate gold diggers. They make it so much harder for the rest of us. He's better off without that disease-ridden bitch," Mina ranted. Abby nodded; it was often easier to just agree with her opinions rather than get into an argument._

"_So are you seeing anyone?" Mina segued into fishing for gossip without a beat._

"_Uhh," Abby froze, her friend's words throwing her into a well of memories that she'd tried to block out. "Jimmy…" she whispered, looking down at her juice._

_She still dreamt about him. If she was lucky, she got to relive the happier memories of their times together. She remembered the island parties they used to go to, how much her dad had disliked her dating Jimmy and how much more attractive this had made him, how lovestruck she'd been…_

"_Jimmy? What's Jimmy like?" Mina obliviously interrupted her train of thought._

"_He died," she mumbled quietly, unable to look up. It still felt like, if she never said it too loudly, it wouldn't be true._

"_Jimmy Mance…" Mina whispered, clearly placing the name. "Oh, sweetie!"_

_She felt the sofa dip to her right as her friend came to sit beside her and an arm drape around her shoulders._

"_Is he the guy in the photo on your desk?"_

_Abby nodded into her glass. "I'm never comfortable talking to Henry about it. I mean, he's lost someone too and it would only remind him of Trish."_

"_Oh sweetie, you can talk to me. What are friends for?"_

"_I – I – I loved him. H-He was my boyfriend, I guess, before I came to L.A. and I loved him. I never really got over him," she whispered, everything flooding out. "W-When I saw him again, I just thought… With the wedding and him being so nice to me again, I thought we could make a go of it. He survived everything and then – he – Wakefield killed him. I thought we could have a life together! We never even got to – Can we – can we talk about something else?"_

"_Sure."_

_~~xx~~_

_She got back in the late afternoon, in a much better mood. After a week of terror and a week and a half of stillness and grief, it was refreshing to spend a few hours with someone happy. Mina hadn't felt her heart break. Mina hadn't seen death and come so close to her own. Mina hadn't escaped from what felt like a horror movie. Instead, in between getting information about the wedding, she'd filled Abby in on what an average life looked like. She was back to juggling two boyfriends, the third apparently having been "clingy and jealous", and enthused about a possible promotion at the office and needing to get some "memorable" stories. It felt like home, as much as L.A. had ever been. Other people's happiness._

_Henry was in the best mood she'd seen him in for weeks, his facing lighting up from the kitchen as she shut the front door behind her. _

"_Hey. How'd it go?"_

"_Good," she smiled. "What are you so happy about?"_

"_It's Friday and we're alive. Lately that's been enough. We should do something."_

"_I was gonna go through mom's stuff," she shrugged. "It's been cluttering up my bedroom. Well, your bedroom. I wanted to see if mom kept anything about my brother. I mean, he's her son. She'd have something."_

"_Want a hand?"_

"_Yeah. We've got all weekend. And if we find anything, we can bring it with us on Monday. It'll be simple."_

"_Hmm…"_

"_What have you been doing anyway?"_

"_Shea's lawyers called. I'll get some stuff in the post tomorrow. Apparently I've inherited a bit from Trish."_

"_She left you something?" Abby was surprised. As Trish hadn't legally married Henry, he wouldn't inherit anything automatically. It had never occurred to her to make a will and the fact that Trish had done so seemed unusual – but then again, Trish had been rich. She actually had something to leave._

"_She made a will years ago…" he trailed off, breaking eye contact and resuming his sandwich. She felt a pang of regret. _I've upset him. He doesn't talk about Trish because it upsets him too badly. Poor Henry.

_~~xx~~_

_They got started late in the evening, Henry having been focused on the TV for news of them – or rather the lack thereof. They hadn't dropped off the radar completely but it was heading that way. For once she was relieved that the media had the attention span of a gnat. She'd raided his bookshelves and had been curled up on the bed with a good book._

"_Are these just her personal things? What happened to her clothes and such?" Henry asked, looking up from his position on the floor as Abby hauled the third and fourth boxes through. He'd offered to help but she'd refused: there wasn't much to carry. He handed her her wine glass, sipping at his own, and she took it casually and put it to one side. As she'd had two while reading, it was her third of the evening and she didn't want to knock it back too quickly._

"_I think dad gave them away when she died. This is just what dad put in boxes for me. He said it was only jewellery and things I might want," she explained, tipping the contents of the boxes onto the floor and sitting cross-legged next to Henry. There were sheaves of papers, small boxes and files, a few ornaments, a box she vaguely remembered as holding her mother's jewellery, some photo frames and other miscellaneous mementos. Taking the box, she lifted out various pieces. There were a couple of simple pairs of earring that she'd have to sterilize and several more decorative necklaces. The necklace she wore, the one her father had given her before he sent her away, was the one her mother had worn day to day. Her hand moved to her neck in memory. The carefully-framed photographs were all of her parents looking so young. She barely recognised the pair, looking as young and in love as Henry and Trish or Cal and Chloe had done._

"_They look so young," she offered the frames to him and smiling at how happy their marriage had been. She recalled Wakefield's question of whether her mother really loved her father or was he just looking after her and smiled painfully, raising the glass to her lips. _Yes, they loved each other. Yes, they were happy.

"_How old were they here?" Henry asked, holding a photo in each hand with an implacable expression flickering over his face. "No wedding rings, no you. These must be their first photos together."_

"_Mom was twenty-seven when she married. Dad was thirty-one. I was born six months later. She's my age here. I never imagined them as young people," she answered. "And now dad's gone too and I'll have to go through everything in the house at some point."_

"_At least you know who killed your parents," he muttered, placing the frames on the floor between then and leaning his head on the seat of the sofa. _Oh. That's why he's uncomfortable.

"_Did they ever catch him? The guy who did it?"_

"_No. Written off as a mugging gone wrong. It's been nearly six years; they're not going to catch him now," he replied, looking straight upwards before turning his head to face her. "I'm sorry. This isn't about them. But don't think I don't know how you're feeling. There's probably no hurry with your dad's things. We can probably get someone on the island to keep an eye on the house for a while."_

"_I'll keep these," she said, picking up a photo of her parents at a barbeque. They were holding hands, her mother was wearing her engagement ring and Abby couldn't help but smile every time she looked at it. She made a mental note to put it next to her bed to watch over her at night. "Is there a ring in there?"_

_Henry rooted around amongst the clutter and picked up a small black jewellery box. Opening it, she saw her father had put both rings in it, a diamond engagement ring and a plain gold wedding band. He turned it round and offered it to her. It looked so much like a tableau of a wedding proposal she had to laugh, and then laughed even more at Henry's confused expression._

"_Sorry," she apologised after she'd stopped giggling. She became serious. "I was thinking. You were right yesterday about me running away to Los Angeles and it not helping. I've let Wakefield ruin my life and I've let Shea drag it down further by not standing up for myself. I'm not John Wakefield's daughter so the next time someone says I am, I'm not going to run away like I did with Ryan. I'm going to explain that I'm not and why I'm not and I am going to get proof."_

"_To the new Abby Mills" Henry said and they clinked their empty glasses together. _

"_And the proof starts here."_

_Putting the jewellery back in the empty box and placing it and the photo frames to one side, they went methodically through the pile. But there was nothing: no birth certificate, no adoption papers, no evidence that a child of Sarah Lawson and John Wakefield had even existed._


	18. Shutting the stable door part 3

She looked up at him, the strain and horror carved into her face, her big eyes peering through her loose fringe. After seventy-two hours of carefully-orchestrated mayhem, she was still beautiful.

"Where's Jimmy?"

And her concern was for the fisherman, who hopefully by now was only fit for worm food. Henry wished he'd died earlier; he'd told his father to leave killing Jimmy to him, but saving him from drowning after his boat exploded was a little excessive, as was failing to kill him after stringing Shane up creatively at the Cannery. But it was just the two of them now, Henry and Abby, and the knife in his back pocket. And John Wakefield approaching behind her, with eyes keen to see the demise of Abby Mills and a will that would never accept compromise.

His father wanted her dead. He'd never let her live. And Abby would want John Wakefield dead or imprisoned. He'd been trying to put this off, trying to tell himself that he could have the woman he loved and the father who was the only one who had ever accepted him for who he was. But, with the blood roaring in his ears and his stomach plunging through the forest floor, he knew this would be his final kill.

"Wakefield got him. I'm so sorry," he answered, trying to sound sympathetic. The pain in her eyes skewered his heart and sent ripples of rage down to his fingers and toes. She would never know how much it burned him, how sick he felt to think – to know – she cared for anyone but him. He knew she didn't mean to hurt him but she was blind to so much. How could she love the fisherman when he, Henry, was her soulmate?

_She'll never love you, _John had told him. _She's like her mother. She's incapable of love. Some people can't lie. Some people can't hate. Abby Mills can't return your love. Look at her. Look at her eyes. She'll never feel anything except in moderation. You can't live like that. So what if it all goes right? So what if you date her, marry her and give me half a dozen inbred grandchildren? She'll never love you properly, however much love and effort you put in. You'll spend your life in a dead marriage. Don't waste your life pining for someone who can't love you back. Kill her and move on._

Ever word in his memory drove nails into his heart. He had to change the subject, buy some more time to think. "You know where we're supposed to meet them?"

"The marina," she whispered as he opened the knife behind his back and held it downwards behind him. "The guy on the radio said that he talked with you and Sully. You said you hadn't seen Sully."

A simple mistake. And yet he'd only been caught in a lie so late in the game it barely mattered anymore. He almost liked the confusion on her face as she slowly realised what he was capable of and tried to reject the possibility that he would lie to her. She had no idea what he was truly like and the pain of this only hardened him more.

"I haven't." A pointless lie to buy him another few seconds as he tried to get closer to her. He could have sworn Wakefield was laughing silently as he came up behind her. He had to hold her gaze. She couldn't panic and derail this moment. "Abby…"

"What's wrong?" she asked. His father was looking only at her but Henry could hear his voice in his head, reciting the simple truth of the matter: Abby could never love him, therefore Abby must die. He brought the knife round slowly, pointing outwards to her, as her mouth fell open and her eyes widened.

"It's OK. It's over." But the words were to himself, not her, as he tried to imagine a world without the pain she inspired.

"Henry," she had time to gasp out his name before he reached her, one hand at the back of her neck to pull her in and hold her steady, the other slipping the blade into her side. He didn't twist it or yank it upwards or do anything to hurry her death. He wanted this moment to last. This was their consummation.

"No…" she gasped, her eyes bigger than he'd ever seen them as they pleaded. "Henry…"

He didn't have much time.

"Abby," he smiled. "I love you."

It was the best kiss of his life. Abby Mills was in his arms, not rejecting him, not struggling. And he could press his lips to hers, taste her mouth, taste her tongue and feel her lips moving him response. She was kissing him. This was the heaven he never thought he'd achieve. Finally he broke off to look down at her, taking in her unfocused gaze and the trickle of blood from the side of her mouth.

"Henry… I love you…"

~~xx~~

He woke up screaming – screaming, fighting, thrashing against the possibility he could have thrown Abby's life away.

She was there in seconds of course, clad in her purple pyjamas and very, very much alive. Disregarding all previous instructions-to-self about hiding his love and not touching her too much, he rushed over and pulled her in close. She hugged him just as tightly as tears of panic streaked down his cheeks and he knew then that everything had been the right choice. _I could never hurt her, never harm her, never upset her. _The stress of dealing with Shea and Madison and Robin, the irritation of dealing with other people at all, the discomfort of living with Abby's stupid mission to find him and her oblivious comments about how wonderful her wretched parents had been – all that he could suffer. _I'll take it all happily for Abby to be alive with me._

"Hey," she whispered as he began to calm down. "Henry, what's wrong?"

He stepped away reluctantly, breaking their union, and got his breath back. "Bad dream. Nightmare. I'm sorry."

"What happened?"

"You died. I saw John Wakefield kill you."

"It's OK," she said soothingly, holding him again but briefer and looser this time. "Wakefield's dead. He can't hurt us. You know, sometimes I have nightmares where you die and it feels the end of the world. But then I remember we're alive. We made it, Henry. I know it doesn't feel much like surviving but we made it."

He had to back away to prevent himself from kissing her, telling her that she was his world too and taking her to bed, even if just to ward off the nightmares. But it wouldn't work then. _Not before Shea leaves us alone. Not while I'm supposed to be mourning. I said Christmas. That's ten, eleven weeks away. And by then the media and everyone else will have forgotten about the murders entirely. Abby will have moved on in her head, given up on the stupid … family thing and realised how much she's loved me all this time. No one will care about us being together. I can last that long._

~~xx~~

Saturday started properly with a morning phone call. Henry held the cell to his ear as his eyes adjusted to the light. Somewhere he could hear Abby pottering around.

"Hi Henry. It's Ollie. Umm, you told me not to phone you yesterday so I thought I'd do it, like, this morning. I had to be up anyway because of… thing. Oh, I wanted to ask you about that too. But, erm, why I'm calling you. It's about Robin Matthews. Devon – erm, Ms. George – asked me to see what I could get from the emails because she thinks I have nothing better to do," he rambled, finally pausing for breath.

"Go on."

"Right, firstly, Robin was really cooperative. She's kinda upset about, you know, someone pretending to be her. Anyway, she gave me a whole load of stuff from college. Essays and things. And all the online stuff she did. It definitely wasn't her who wrote the emails. The writing's completely different. And the spelling – she spells "enquire" with an "e" but the emails that were supposed to be from her spell "inquire" with an "i". Stuff like that. And get this: the writing, the sentence structure is the same between the emails supposedly from her and the emails supposedly from Ashley Wease. Ashley died before her emails were sent and her address isn't her real one either. So I think, like, the whole thing was faked," Ollie finished proudly.

Henry felt like burying his head in the pillow and disassociating himself from Robin entirely. _Crap. No, don't try to figure out the emails, Ollie. Of course they were fake. And very hurried. The last thing I need right now is an investigation._

"Ollie, do you really have nothing better to do?"

"No. Err, well I'm up because I'm seeing Hayley later and I need to head out first. I need – I was going to – you know I love Hayley and we've been together for nearly three years? I think I'm gonna ask her to marry me. Not today. Just getting a ring today. Kinda nervous about it. Umm, yeah. Just thought you'd want to know about the Robin thing."

"Have you told her? Robin, I mean."

"Yeah, yesterday. She was dead relieved. Well, not dead. The point is she's not dead. Unlike, you know, everyone else. Umm. Yeah. Anyway, I've got to go."

"Henry, you've got post," Abby interrupted, laying an envelope on the table next to him and disappearing again. Henry said goodbye to Ollie and hung up, picking up the envelope and seeing the name of Shea's lawyers on it. He lifted out the papers and read over them. They confirmed everything he'd heard yesterday. As neither Trish or Katherine had survived Thomas Wellington's death by thirty days, neither had inherited anything from him at the time of their deaths. Shea was his only beneficiary, unless Ben Wellington turned up alive, which he of course wasn't going to. However, Trish's inexplicable desire to write a will before a skiing holiday two years ago meant that he inherited everything of hers. Henry read down a list of properties, material possessions and bank balances, totalled them in his head and swore under his breath.

_This is exactly what I didn't want to happen. Why did Thomas put things in Trish's name? Could I look any more like a gold digger? Anyone finds out about this and they're going to jump on the wrong motive. I don't need money and I don't need anything of Trish's! I'll have to sell everything as soon as I can decently otherwise it'll just keep reminding Abby of her._

"Henry, before breakfast do you want to come running with me?"

~~xx~~

The rest of the weekend was quiet. He fired off a quick email Saturday afternoon to Devon George asking what was happening in the office and why Oliver Melvin had time for acting like a boy detective, hoping to dissuade them both, and left a message for Shea about Trish's money. Abby spoke to a newsagents about getting the L.A. Times delivered to his apartment, something that pleased him no end because it meant she planned to stay in Seattle for him.

They went running again on Sunday morning in a local park. He'd known that Abby liked to run but hadn't realised exactly how happy it made her to go out and do a dozen laps. He jogged next to her, exhilarated at the biggest adrenaline rush since they'd left the island, and grinned as she panted, smiled back at him and swerved out the way of a family with a dog. Somehow, when she was sweaty, worn out and not made up at all, she was at her most beautiful.

Crashing on a bench afterwards and swallowing a mouthful of cool water, Henry made a mental note to do this every morning. Spending quality time with Abby was golden, even if it wasn't on their island.

"You know?" Abby started in between getting her breath back. "This is the first time I've been out for myself since getting back. For a second there I felt happy. It's nice not being cooped up."

"I know what you mean. It feels normal."


	19. Shutting the stable door part 4

_"Henry, I – " she sighed again. Here he was doing her yet another favour._

_"It's nothing. There are some things I need to get. And I wouldn't be doing anything else," he shrugged it off, grinning sideways at her from the driver's seat. "Besides, it's good to see you smile again."_

_She did so automatically, looking down at the printed-off map in her hands. If she could pay everyone in smiles, her life would be a lot easier. She knew perfectly well that there was nothing Henry could get in Olympia that he couldn't get in Seattle. She'd spent a lot of the journey wondering how on earth she could thank him for taking the time and effort to drive her there and back and had eventually realised that the only thing she had to offer was her company – the same thing he'd asked for last Thursday._

_"Sure you don't want to come in with me? You're part of this too."_

_He shook his head. "It's kinda personal. You don't come with me to visit Trish. I won't get in between you and … him."_

_"You'll get bored, just being on your own," she suggested, realising immediately after speaking that perhaps her friend wanted some time alone. He hadn't indicated that he needed space or freedom and sometimes she wondered how she would cope if he wasn't there, but she knew she wasn't the woman Henry had imagined living with after his wedding._

_"No, I've got two papers to get through," he nodded towards them on the back seat. "Abby?"_

_"Hmm."_

_"Don't get your hopes up too much. He could be like his father."_

~~xx~~

_He dropped her off outside the building, insisting that she could call him any time and they'd go for lunch afterwards. She looked upwards at the windows and breathed out slowly. Her stomach clenched and she tried to tell herself that it was just cramps. _I'm not nervous. Why would I be nervous?_ This was Olympia, not Harper's, and Henry was always at the other end of a phone. She strode towards the door and let herself in. _Here's the secret everyone died for. My parents, my friends, everyone Henry loved. Why did no one tell me? Why did mom never say I had a brother?

_"Where do I go for adoption records?"_

_"Fourth floor," the woman on reception answered, pointing towards the elevator. Abby hurried across the floor and inside, head down, hoping that no one would recognise her. It seemed unlikely. After all, to most people, she was just another face in another human tragedy._ And Henry might be the only one who ever understands what's happened to me. And Shea… I barely know her, but surely our mutual experience should push us together, not draw us apart? Maybe I should contact her, explain about my brother, explain that it's not me.

_A blonde woman looked impatiently up at her from the desk. "Can I help you?"_

_Abby sat down on an itchily-upholstered green chair opposite the woman. _If I can survive Wakefield, I can survive bureaucracy._ For a second, the other woman looked faintly annoyed that a distraction had arrived but put aside her work and turned to her. Abby noticed a sign with the woman's name: Petra Harding._

_"I – I'm looking for – I found out recently that I have a half-brother," Abby explained. "I wanted to find him."_

_"Well, you're in the right place," Petra replied with a smile and Abby wondered if she'd initially misjudged the woman. "Do you have his name?"_

_"No."_

_"Date of birth?"_

_"No, I don't know anything about him. That's why I've come here."_

_"Ah, OK. And you are?"_

_"My name is Abby Mills." _She doesn't even recognise the name.

_"And what do you know about the person you're trying to find?"_

_"He's my half-brother. My mother's son by a different father. He's older than me so…" Abby paused while mentally calculating the last date her brother could have been born. "He must have been born before August 1982."_

_"His mother's name?"_

_"Sarah Mills. Well, she would have been Sarah Lawson at the time. It was before she married my dad."_

_"And his father's?"_

_"I don't know," she lied. _No one knows my mother's name but everyone'll know the name John Wakefield. And mom might not even have given a father's name if she was running away from him. How did mom ever willingly give up her son?_ "How does this work?"_

_"Well, if you give your consent, we'll appoint someone to search the adoption records. If the man you're looking for exists, we'll contact him and tell him that he has a sister who wants to find him. If he consents, we'll give you his details and you can contact him. It's quite simple."_

_"And what if he doesn't consent?"_

_"If he doesn't want to get in contact with blood relatives, we can't give you any contact details due to privacy laws. Unless it's a medical emergency or something," Petra shrugged. Abby wasn't worried. There wasn't any reason for her brother to reject her._

_"But you will contact him?"_

_"Yes. Well, unless… uhh, sometimes people who know they were adopted actively want to be found so they can leave a note on their adoption records saying that and giving permission for their details to be passed along. If that's the case, it'll be much quicker for you."_

_"How long is it likely to take?"_

_"We're a bit back-logged at the moment. Maybe six to eight weeks. Is that OK?"_

_Abby nodded slowly. It wasn't ideal. She hardly wanted six to eight weeks of being accused of being John Wakefield's daughter. _But I'll probably never see Lucy's boyfriend again. Or anyone else. The only person I will see who thinks that about me is Henry and he's too nice to care. So what's six weeks?_ Rooting through her bag to find her diary, she felt her cell phone vibrate against her hand. Pulling it out, she saw she'd missed two texts, both from Henry. She read the most recent one first._

_"There's a piece in the LA Times about you and Jimmy from your friend Mina. You might want to read it." Abby's stomach plummeted. _Jimmy… But I barely said anything about him to Mina and that was private. I told her as a friend, not a reporter._ She felt sick, painfully sick, and would have doubled over in grief if she'd been back in the apartment. _How much did I tell her? How much in the paper?

_The second, preceding text wasn't as bad. "Pix in Seattle Times of us out running yesterday. Didn't know that was news. Seen any camera crews today?" She'd never really been comfortable with photos or home movies and, after the previous few days, desperately wanted to stay out of the news. I need to speak to Henry now._

_She turned back to Petra. "Erm… I – Something's happened and I need to speak to my friend. Could I come back later? How late are you open?"_

_"I'll be here 'til five. Take all the time you need to think about it."_

~~xx~~

_She met Henry at a restaurant and they ordered lunch. She grabbed both papers and, wanting to put off facing her memories of Jimmy and innocence and love, flicked through the Seattle paper until she came to the photos of herself and her friend. Henry said something as drinks and plates were put in front of them but she didn't hear what. She looked awful, of course, with her hair scraped back in a headband and her face red and sweaty. Henry said her name again and she looked up._

_"I said: I spoke to a couple of jewellers for you. Are you sure you want to sell those necklaces?" he asked, nodding towards the brown envelope containing some of the chokers and tighter necklaces that had once been her mother's._

_"Henry, can you think of a reason why I wouldn't want anything tight around my neck?" she answered slowly. He winced and she immediately felt guilty for attacking him. _I can't snap at Henry. It's not his fault Wakefield didn't suffer, didn't experience the fear and agony of this victims before he died. He should have been broken. He shouldn't have had an easier death than everyone else.

_"Did you see any cameras yesterday?" she noted vaguely him speaking in the background, the foreground of her mind full of ways they might have died. Slowly, she reached out, pulled the envelope into her lap and lifted out the pieces that used to encircle her mother's neck. Abby struggled to breathe as she imagined rope coiling around hers instead. "I don't remember anyone. I know there were photos of us at the funerals but nothing since. Do you think we've been followed here?"_

_"He should have hanged! He should have died like he killed my parents! We should have hanged him!" she burst out, too loud and too angry for being in public but she didn't care. Henry leaned in and took her hand._

_"Abby, if I could have hanged him, I would have," he insisted quietly._

_"Did it feel good stabbing him? Did it feel good killing him the same way he killed JD and Trish?"_

_She regretted saying it the instance it was out. Henry's face froze in a blend of shock and horrified comprehension. His lips moved silently as his mind scrolled across the possible replies._

_"I – I'm sorry…"_

_"No," he finally answered. "No, Abby, it doesn't feel good killing anyone in any way."_

_"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have reminded you and I shouldn't have put you on the spot like that," she said as he looked down into his half-eaten meal. She pretended not to see him blink back tears._

_"It feels good knowing he's dead and that he can't hurt us now, if that helps."_

_"Thank you," she smiled as he raised his head and he beamed at her._

_"That –" he unfolded the other paper across the table. Abby's eyes jumped to M. Randall in the by-line and began to skim the article. "That is going to feel less good. Why did you tell her all that?"_

_"But despite reams of photos of the beautiful couple, bride- and groom-to-be Trish Wellington and Henry Dunn, they weren't the only example of young love cruelly ripped apart by serial killer John Wakefield…"_

_"Oh God," she breathed. The flowery prose mocked her in black-and-white. _Everyone has read this article. Henry has read this article. My grandmother has read this article._ She slumped down in her chair, unable to meet his eyes and wondering if praying for a hole to open up in the floor for her would work. _Probably not. Maybe I should ring gran and tell her Mina made the whole thing up. No, that would only make it worse. She might not have even read it yet.

_"We are not going to talk about this," she told Henry. "Right, umm… Stop grinning! This isn't funny!"_

_"OK, so what happened at the office?" Henry asked in a blatant attempt to change the subject._

_"They're going to find him for me. I can fill in the forms and such and they'll go through the records. When they find him, they'll put us in contact. It'll be fine. I'll go back after we've eaten."_

_"Just like that?"_

_"It might take a while. The woman there said six to eight weeks. And my brother will have to give permission. But there's no reason for him to not want to meet me, is there? You'd want to meet your long-lost sister, wouldn't you?"_

_"Yeah," he said, hesitating slightly. "Although maybe not with all this in the news at the moment. Reckon it'll be over by the time six weeks roll around?"_

_"Easily. I just wish it was sooner. I can't wait to meet him."_

_"Abby, I'm a bit worried about all the press. If they've seen us here, they might find out what you're doing and scare him off."_

_"I can't curl up and do nothing. You said it yourself, running away from things doesn't help," she insisted. She could understand Henry's concern for her and his reluctance to meet the son of the man who killed his friends and family, but this wasn't about Henry. This was about her. "I have to do this, Henry."_

_"Do you want me to give you a lift back so you fill in your forms?" he finally said, laying down his cutlery and waggling his car keys in front of her._

_"No," she grinned. "I want to drive."_


	20. Stranger in a familiar land part 1

Henry sat in the passenger seat of his car and raged. The newspaper with the offending piece had been left on the backseat, only he couldn't rip it into little shreds or burn it because Abby would only want to know why. At least one of its subjects had burned. _How dare anyone talk about Abby that way? _Some of it was true, he knew from knowing Abby, and some he'd guessed but he was almost certain Abby's friend had made some aspects up. _Why would Abby tell anyone that? She's never tried to talk about him to me._

Abby wouldn't be an hour so he'd said he would stay in the car to make a couple of phone calls. He certainly wasn't going to go back into the building. No, he'd done all he could on Friday. His adoption records would have a notice on them with his refusal to be contacted or to disclose personal information to anyone who came hunting. It was the quickest way to stop Abby and get her back to the proper path of moving on together. _The woman knows though. And anyone who processes Abby's request. I might have to kill them all._

He'd called Shea earlier after trying to get rid of his whore mother's jewellery and she'd told him to ring back two hours later. It was Abby's only plan that day that he truly approved of. He'd sooner throw out the whole lot and claim they'd been burgled that see Abby dressed up like her. They'd agreed to stop by at one jewellers after Abby was finished. With any luck, she'd give away the rest too. Everything had to go. Neither of them needed the memories and all he could think of, looking at the boxes on his bedroom floor, was how the woman who'd given birth to him hadn't bothered to keep anything as a reminder.

_Come on Henry, you love Abby and Abby loves her mother. If you're going to live with her for the rest of your life, you'll have to put up with some things. You accepted this ages ago._

"Henry?" He heard Shea over the phone.

"Shea, hullo, it's me again. Is now a good time?"

~~xx~~

She came over two days later, looking pale but considerably better than the last time he'd seen her. She was still in greys and blacks, and somehow looked so much older than she had before he'd split her father's head in two. It must have been bad, given that she was sending her wretched daughter away to a different continent. Madison tagged along behind, trying to open the cardboard boxes and pretending to be helpful.

"Henry," Shea started as they looked around the room. "I think this is everything. I spent last night sorting it all."

"Thanks, Shea. Can I get you a coffee?" he asked. Shea nodded and settled on the sofa. He didn't mind. This might be his final impression and he didn't want the image she'd have of him for the rest of her life to be a bad one. "Madison, want anything?"

"Where's Abby?"

"Uhh, she went out. She needed to pick up a few things."

Madison followed him through to the kitchen, looking up at him with curious pale eyes. _Does she know? Does she understand how dangerous she is? _ Shea sat up and looked intently after her daughter but made no effort to stop her.

"Is Abby living here?" she asked, opening the fridge door and pulling out a carton of pineapple juice. "Can I have some of this?"

"Sure. Yes, Abby's staying here for a bit. Here you go."

"I thought I could see a lot of her things here," Shea commented as he handed her the mug and sat in a chair opposite. "Is she going to be here for a while? Doesn't she live down in LA?"

He tried to look saddened, while feeling genuinely sad he hadn't poisoned her coffee. _Abby and I are supposed to be together. Don't you get that? _"I'm on my own and I like having someone around," he answered simply. "It gets lonely. You must know that."

Shea nodded and took a tentative sip of coffee before deciding it was too hot. "I do see the flowers you leave for Trish. I know you miss her like I do," she tried to smile. The effort had paid off. "But – doesn't Abby remind you of everything, of Wakefield?"

"She's a victim in this too," he argued. It wasn't true – she'd been physically safe from his father the whole time, just scared – but neither Shea nor Abby would ever know that. "She's lost her friends, her dad – yes, she insists Charlie Mills is her father. I can't really argue with her. Neither of us know for sure. She's my only friend left."

Shea smiled as her daughter fidgeted next to her, half the pineapple juice ignored. "I saw that piece earlier today. She said some really sweet things about her parents."

_Lies. Abby didn't think to mention her mother running away from a boyfriend who loved her, taking his child and throwing me away like trash and her father fitting up an innocent man for murder and having him locked up for 17 years, and later lying to everyone that he was dead. There wasn't a single regret between them. But between them they managed to produce the most wonderful woman in the world._

"We've got that paper too. I think it's under the cushions. Abby's having them delivered here," he replied. Yesterday's paper was the main reason he no longer wanted to wring the neck of Abby's smiling friend. Tuesday's edition had containing a charming piece on "Henry the hero". _Abby said all that about me. How brave and strong and kind I was. She loves me. She has to. However embarrassed she was yesterday, that was just because it's so soon. I brought her back to society and she's trying to live by their rules._

_I'll kill Shea if she says one cruel word to Abby when she gets back. Abby, where are you? Come home. How long does it take to pick up female things at the pharmacy?_

"Really. She's moved in properly then," Shea snipped and Henry dug his nails into his palms.

"I've got some of Trish's old things too. I thought they might be better with you. Some clothes she left, stuff in the bathroom cabinet, a bunch of photos… I'll get the box," he jumped up and went to retrieval the things he'd spent the day before collecting. Even if Shea hadn't been coming round, some things had to go. Abby knew they weren't his and they didn't need a third person in the house.

"Ooh," Madison squealed as he put the box down next to the sofa. "Can I take a picture of Aunty Trish too?"

"Yes, Madison, you can take pictures of everyone. Me and Daddy, Aunty Trish, Grandfather, Katherine, Uncle Ben, even Uncle Henry if you really want. But you won't be that far away. We can still talk to one another."

Henry heard the door open and shut and his heart leapt. _Abby! _ His cheeks ached slightly as he felt the smile spread automatically across his face, as natural as his love for this beautiful woman.

"Hey, did you get what you wanted?" he asked, wandering into the hall to meet her. She smiled back and drew her fingers through her hair in the mirror. "Shea's here. And Madison."

"Oh, umm, I'll make coffee," she said startled, stopping to leave her bag on his bed – _her bed now, really, although it should be ours _– and dashed off towards the kitchen.

"We've got some already. Come and join us. Shea brought some things over of mine. Things left at Trish's."

The place looked more comfortable immediately with Abby in it, colours enriching around her body. He watched as she and Shea exchanged looks, unsure of how each woman regarded the other. Other people's relationships had always been difficult for him to understand and following those in a web of friends was actively tedious. But Abby was back and little else mattered.

~~xx~~

Although he'd spoken to all parties by email, he'd wanted to come into the office to finalise Robin's departure. Upset and angry at what had happened to her, Robin couldn't be persuaded to stay on a Hometown Press to be transferred to another job or even finish the one she'd started at Harper's Globe. Devon had said the girl was considering going back to college if it wasn't too late. Henry was just delighted to get rid of her.

"Henry Dunn?" she called over to him as he arrived, reaching into the window of a cab to pay her fare.

"Robin. How are you?" he asked, holding the door open as they went inside. "Devon said you were leaving. I hope you don't blame us too badly for everything. I think we both got caught up in whatever game Wakefield was playing."

"I know it's not your fault. I just want to put it all behind me. I think I'm gonna go back to Washington Pacific. I've emailed the people there and they might let me back. I only dropped out over Ashley and, after all this, I might get extra credit for special circumstances," she explained as Devon met them in the lobby. According to everybody, the murders had actually led to a spike in business. Henry had a terrible feeling he'd have to resume full-time work soon.

"Robin, ahh, you're here," Devon greeted her and led her to his office. "Henry, I hate to go on but there's paperwork on your desk that should have been signed off three weeks ago."

He flicked through papers accordingly as Devon explained what they'd agreed by email. A letter from a publisher asking if he and Abby had considered writing a book on their experience caught his eye. Robin clutched her bag on her lap and gradually looked more relieved at the news that she wasn't going to be forcefully sent back to Harper's Island or penalised for not doing so.

"And I am so, so, so sorry for the confusion with the emails. I understand at the moment you don't want to continue but, if you ever do, just know that we've never had anything like this before. I've been here five years and everyone we've employed has always said we've treated them well," she babbled. Her main worry seemed to be getting sued by Robin Matthews for screwing up. "Henry Dunn and I have discussed your situation and we're happy to pay you the salary for the whole job plus a little extra in return for putting this whole affair behind us. We're also happy to have you back after you graduate or give you an excellent reference if you go somewhere else."

Robin smiled, looking a little embarrassed, and nodded. "Thank you. That would be amazing. I'm gonna spend a little more time in Seattle and then I'll be off. Maybe stay for next week, then leave at the weekend."

"Robin," Devon said, suddenly sounding serious. "Do you want us to contact the police about Wakefield's emails?"

Henry jumped. This wasn't something they'd talked about. He envisioned the police turning the case over to armies of geeks and them tracking down the computers each email had been sent from. _That's not necessarily a death sentence. Assuming dad was telling the truth, any investigation would cross state lines. If the internet café had CCTV, it would still look like he did the whole thing alone. But if they get the wording compared professionally, it's still going to look nothing like the ramblings in his prison journal and everything like my style. And if they bother trying to track his movements before the wedding week back far enough, they might find me. This is bad. This is really bad._

"What good would that do?" he argued to both women. "It's just going to make it worse for all of us. Robin isn't going to want to relive both her friend's death and her experience on the island again and I don't want Hometown Press dragged through the mud as you, me and the rest of the company look stupid."

"He's right. I don't want to think about it any more," Robin replied, to his immense relief. "If Wakefield was still alive, I would. But not now when nothing good is going to come of it. I don't think I ever thanked you properly for killing him."


	21. Stranger in a familiar land part 2

_The first thing she did when they got in was to put Lawson out of her head, leave Henry to fume on her behalf in the kitchen as it was the only way she knew to put up with his moods and get straight on the phone to her friend. _I didn't give her permission to write any of that! Oh Jimmy, I'm sorry. I'll have to speak to your parents too, otherwise they'll think I deliberately told Mina everything about us. _She couldn't be furious like Henry was though. This wasn't Harper's Island and he couldn't solve her problems with violence._

"_Mina, it's Abby," she began._

"_Abby, sweetie! How are you?" Mina beamed down the phone. "I saw some photos of you out jogging. You look amazing. Properly happy again. I miss going jogging with you on Sundays. I just can't motivate myself on my own. When are you coming back for a visit?"_

"_Mina… What you wrote about me today, that was off the record," she said in an attempt to be civil and keep the embarrassment and anger under wraps. After all, she'd be back there in 2009 and alienating herself from her colleagues would be shooting herself in the foot._

"_About Jimmy Mance? But that was the best part! Your emotions, the childhood love stories, the human tragedy of it all. Other papers are talking about the human story of Henry Dunn and the Wellingtons. Well, when they're not speculating about John Wakefield. We have a complete exclusive on you, sweetie."_

"_It was private, Mina. I told you as a friend. I always feel a bit awkward talking to Henry about Jimmy so that's why I told you," she tried to explain. In retrospect, she'd been stupid to say anything to any reporter but she'd worked with Mina for years. "I thought you just wanted to know what I could tell you about life on Harper's Island, my childhood there and the local people. And Henry and all of the Wellingtons and Henry's friends and…"_

"_That's later in the week. It's Monday. We need to get people hooked on them by starting with something big. You know how this works. We write these kind of stories all the time, you and me," she heard her friend argue. It didn't make having her personal life printed publically feel any better though._

"_But did you have to print all of it?" Abby felt her voice break a fraction. _

"_No," Mina replied bluntly. "I could have led with the Wakefield piece, the Henry piece, the one on your parents, anything. But I had to start with something new! Don't you get it? I need to get noticed. My name needs to be attached to a story that gets talked about. There is a promotion coming up and I need it!"_

_Abby sighed. She had no idea what to say. Mina seemed to take it as approval for her to go on. Her voice hardened and strained._

"_Listen. My rent goes up on the first of January. I cannot afford to stay on features. I have loans to pay off. The rent in my apartment is ridiculous anyway but it's ridiculous everywhere in L.A. even in your little one bedroom place. And there's a good chance I'll end up with Shelley's children dumped on me. My current salary is not going to cover that, OK?" she paused for breath. For a second, Abby thought she was crying. "We don't all have millionaire friends. And just because one's taken you in right now doesn't mean you won't be in exactly the same situation when you get back! So don't get all high and mighty with me!"_

_~~xx~~_

_She'd only packed for a week so naturally she ran out of several things she needed relatively soon. Finding tampons in the bathroom after a rummage through the cupboards had made her breathe a sigh of relief and belatedly remember to thank Henry for thinking of her when he last went shopping. It was the confused look on his face that made her realise: Henry hadn't bought them for her recently; she'd been using Trish's things. He'd argued that it was fine, he wasn't going to use them, but she'd immediately gone out to stock up on everything she might need. _

_She'd heard voices as soon as she got back. Her heart sank as she recognised Shea. _Please don't let her ask about my parentage. I'm not having a repeat of Thursday. She let Madison spread lies about me.

"_Hey, did you get what you wanted? Shea's here. And Madison," Henry appeared in front of her, grinning. She nearly pointed out that he didn't need to hover, then considered that he might be trying to apologise for not telling her Shea would be visiting._

"_Oh, I'll make coffee," she offered. _Anything to put off Shea.

"_We've got some already. Come and join us. Shea brought some things over of mine. Things left at Trish's," Henry said, waving her into the room._

_Shea greeted her awkwardly and Abby sat down opposite her, wondering what to say. Madison next to her mother ignored her and continued to root through a cardboard box with one hand and hold a photo of her aunt in the other. Abby felt a pang of pity for Henry, having to see her face again. _It's not fair for Shea to bring these around. How is poor Henry supposed to heal?

"_How are you, Abby?" Shea smiled. Before Abby could reply, Madison's head jerked up to look at her. The girl jumped to her feet, upsetting both a cup of coffee and a glass of what looked like her pineapple juice. Shea reacted quicker than she thought physically possible, grabbing a wad of tissues from her bag and stemming the puddle. Abby wondered if Madison would reflexively deny it like she'd done with her grandmother's china._

"_But I'm thirsty!" she cried instead. It was all the prompting Abby needed._

"_Madison, come with me. We'll get you another drink," she urged, ushering the girl into the kitchen. "Do you want pineapple juice again?"_

"_Uh huh," she nodded. "I'm leaving on Saturday so I'm not going to see you again after today, Abby."_

"_I hear you're going on a vacation," she replied in the politest way she could. The reason she couldn't be angry at the nine-year-old girl who'd unwittingly told so many lies about her was what Henry had said, although he clearly hadn't thought about it like she had._

"_It's not a vacation," Madison said, looking at the floor and shuffling her feet. "Mommy doesn't want me anymore so I have to go away."_

"_Madison, that's not true," Abby insisted, crouching in front of the girl, her voice choking. "Your mother loves you and she will always love you. But, Madison, please understand. Your mommy's going through a hard time at the moment. With your dad and your granddad and your auntie. She has to run a business now. And here everyone knows who we are. In Ireland, you'll be normal again. It's not that she doesn't want you here. It's that she wants you to have a normal childhood."_

_Madison looked at her but said nothing._

"_After my mom died, my dad sent me away to live with my gran. I hated him for it. For years. Even when I moved into my own place. He used to send me Christmas and birthday cards every year and I'd never reply. I thought he didn't love me anymore. But he was only doing it to protect me from Wakefield. I don't want you to end up like me. Don't hate your mom. Call her every weekend and tell her about Ireland."_

"_I'm not going to fit in there," the girl whispered. "My cousins think I'm weird."_

"_Try," Abby told her. "I'll get better. I promise. You know the best way to get revenge on people like John Wakefield who ruin lives? Living well."_

_Madison gave a half-smile. "Mommy says I have to lose my accent. But I don't have an accent."_

"_Yes, you do."_

"_But I'm not foreign! Only foreign people have accents."_

"_Over there you will be," she laughed. "Here, let's go back in, shall we?"_

_~~xx~~_

_She'd met the girl nearly two weeks ago but only Shea telling Henry about her account of meeting Ben Wellington the night before she'd arrived in Seattle had reminded Abby about Robin Matthews. There was another niggling reminder in Abby's head to ring someone else but she couldn't remember who. She swirled the white wine around her glass waiting for the young woman to pick up._

"_Hello?"_

"_Robin Matthews? It's Abby Mills, from Harper's Island. We met at the funerals there a few weeks back."_

"_Oh, hi. Umm, how are you?"_

"_I'm doing OK. I meant to ring before, I just… Well, I've had things to sort out. Are you still in Seattle?" she asked._

"_Yes, for now. I'm just trying to sort things out with Hometown Press and relax a little. It hasn't been a good few months," answered Robin. Abby could remember a little of Robin's account of what she'd been through on the island and what had happened before that. An interview she'd done with the Seattle Times had filled in a lot of the blanks._

"_I was wondering if you'd like to meet up before you left. I wanted to talk about some things with you and I don't think you know anyone here except us, do you?" she asked hesitantly. She barely knew the girl at all and didn't want her to bolt._

"_Talk about what?" Robin blurted out, sounding startled._

"_You're the only person alive I think who knows anything about what Wakefield did between 2001 and now. There are a lot of things I'm still trying to work out and I thought you might be able to help," Abby explained. _If Robin actually saw John Wakefield on the night of the car crash and if my brother was in league with Wakefield, she might have seen him. But if my brother was involved in whatever his father was up to, would I even want to know him? _But she held out that Robin might know something useful. "And I spoke to Shea Allen earlier today. She said she spoke to you at the funerals on Harper's Island and you mentioned that you met Ben Wellington."_

"_Yeah, I – I was on a date with Brent. We ran into Ben at a bar. Umm, when do you want to meet?"_

"_Any time. I'm not doing anything."_

"_I need to sort out college stuff tomorrow and I've got a meeting on Friday. How about lunch Saturday?" Robin offered. "One thing though – no sushi."_

_Abby smiled as she heard Robin end the call. Shea had spent a good deal of time earlier talking about her still-absent cousin and how the police hadn't been able to find him. He hadn't been in contact with anyone and there'd been no signs of his body on the island. Shea was terrified that he was dead too and Abby had lost all her resentment for the woman at the sight of the worry in her face. Henry had agreed to come to the airport with her to see Madison off that weekend._

_It was odd though and it was something that Abby had decided to look into. She'd missed reporting, delving into people and details. Sitting around Henry's apartment and making the most of the free time was enjoyable but she'd seen the consequences of inactivity. As far as she could tell, there wasn't long in which he could have gone missing. _Robin says he was in Seattle on Sunday night with a friend and she's got no reason to be lying. Then he wasn't on the boat to leave at 2pm on Monday and I'm sure someone said he was making his own way to Harper's. Wakefield had to be on the island that evening to break into my hotel room. If Wakefield killed him, there are only two options. Either it was Monday afternoon in Seattle then Wakefield headed straight to the island and that should be easy enough to track down. Someone must have seen something! Or Ben made it to the island and was killed there before meeting anyone so his body should be there too. But what about Brent?

_At Henry's shout that dinner was ready, Abby threw her cell down in the middle of the bed and knocked back the rest of her drink. If she had to wait six weeks to contact Lawson, she could do something in the meantime. She caught sight of herself in the hallway mirror and her gaze converged on the ever-present pearl at her collarbone. _Mom. I have to ring Karina._ Then a different idea struck her._

"_Henry, I've just thought of something. Tell me I'm being ridiculous," she started, grabbing cutlery from the drawer and pouring them both new drinks. He grinned but she knew he'd always listen. That was one of the lovely things about Henry._

"_Go on."_

"_It's about Ben Wellington. You said he'd chartered a private boat after he missed the yacht so he was definitely on Harper's. He would have known about everyone in the party and all the places and timings with the hotel and the rehearsal and everything. But he hasn't turned up."_

"_Abby, he's probably dead. We're the only ones who survived."_

"_No, that wasn't – Remember what Madison said about there being another man in the tunnels, someone helping Wakefield? How do we know it wasn't Ben?"_

* * *

A wild chapter title appears! Events in chapters run concurrently/overlap etc. This is a six-part chapter.


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